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Reprinted for the Pilgrim Tercentenary
The
American Spirit
The Landing
of the Pilgrims
and
Other Orations
WEBSTER
ELDER
SCOTT,
FORESMAN
and COMPANY
Chicago
New York
REPRINTED FOR
THE PILGRIM TERCENTENARY
THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
AS EXPRESSED IN
THE FIRST SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND
AND SELECTIONS FROM OTHER ORATIONS
BY
DANIEL WEBSTER
EDITED FOR SCHOOL USE
BY
SARAH ELDER
TEACHER OP ENGLISH, KALAMAZOO HIGH SCHOOL
KALAMAZOO, MICHIGAN
SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY
CHICAGO NEW YORK
F6«
"We sit here in the Promised Land
That floM's with Freedom's honey and milk;
But 'twas they won it, sword in hand,
Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk."
"Harvard Commemoration Ode," LowtJl.
^
'i^^
()
COPYRiaHT, 1920, SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY
OCT 22 IJ2Q
©ClA6009'i5
FOREWORD
The object of the Pilgrim Tercentenary Celebration is
to arouse and strengthen the true American spirit. No
writer or speaker has better expressed that spirit than
Daniel Webster. These two thoughts have brought about
the present publication. "The First Settlement of New
England" is the most complete and appropriate for this
occasion of Webster's patriotic speeches. Selections from
the other orations have been added, wherever passages
have been found setting iforth in a forceful way the
American idea. There have been included also a brief
list of poems embodying the same idea, a list of pictures
illustrating episodes of the Pilgrims' journey, and a
pageant which has been successfully given.
The biographical materia is largely a group of selections
brought together from eminent sources to illustrate how
Webster himself was a development of the American ideal.
For the use of the quotations, particularly from Lodge's
Daniel Webster, Houghton Mifflin & Co.; Curtis's Life of
Daniel Webster, Appleton ; McMaster's Daniel Webster,
Century; as well as for the text of the orations which is
taken from the National Edition of Webster's Writings and
Speeches, grateful acknowledgment is made to the pub-
lishers.
The Editor.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Foreword 3
Introduction —
The Pilgrim Tercentenary 7
The Pilgrim Calendar 9
The Mayflower Compact 10
Inscription on the Pilgrim Memorial Monument 11
A Pageant of the Pilgrims 12
Daniel Webster —
The Tj^pical New Englander 15
The Defender of the Constitution 19
The Greatest American Orator 22
Important Events in the Life of Daniel Webster 27
Most Famous Orations of Daniel Webster 28
Bibliographies ' 29
Orations —
Outline of First Settlement of New England 33
First Settlement of New England 35
The Greek Revolution 67
The Bunker Hill Monument 70
Adams and Jefferson , 74
The Character of Washington 76
The Landing at Plymouth 80
Pilgrim Festival at New York in 1850 85
The Addition to the Capitol 93
INTEODUCTION
The Pilgrim Tercentenary
On Monday, December 21,* 1620, the Pilgrims landed
on the shore of Plymouth Harbor. It was for them not
only the culmination of a long, stormy, uncomfortable
voyage of sixty-six days, but the consummation of their
quest for a home wherQ they might govern themselves,
educate their children, and, unmolested, worship God after
their own fashion ; a quest pursued for thirteen years from
the leaving of their English homes in 1607. For us it was
the beginning of the great American Eepublic. The com-
pact signed on board the Mayflower ten days before was
a momentous document, the first "constitution" of a great
Christian commonwealth, the first declaration of the rights
of Englishmen to self-government in the fullest sense.
The anniversary of these events has, from time to time,
been fittingly commemorated. The first celebration took
place under the auspices of the "Old Colony Club" on
Friday, December 22, 1769. To the social aspect of this
occasion there was added in 1770 a short address, pro-
nounced "with mode^st and decent firmness, by a member
of the club, Edward AVinslow, Jr., Esq." In 1771, at the
suggestion of Eev. Chandler Eobbins, a public sermon
was delivered, as peculiarly adapted to the occasion. The
anniversary celebrations continued without interruption
until 1780, in spite of the dissolution of the "Old Colony
\
♦The date was December 11. old style. By mistake the twenty-
second of Jtecember has been the date usually observed in anniver-
sary celebrations.
8 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
Club" in 1773. After an interval of fourteen years a
public discourse was again delivered by the Rev. Dr. Rob-
bins. With private celebrations or public addresses the day
was from that time on annually commemorated until 1819.
In 1820 the "Pilgrim Society" was formed by the citizens
of Plymouth and the descendants of the Pilgrims in other
places who were desirous of uniting "to commemorate the
landing, and to honor the memory of the intrepid men who
first set foot on Plymouth Rock."* The founding of this
society gave a new impulse to the anniversary celebration,
and Daniel Webster was requested to deliver the public
address on the twenty-second of December of that year,
the bicentennial. He entitled his oration "The First Set-
tlement of New England."
From 1820 to the present day, with occasional inter-
ruptions, the twenty-second of December has been cele-
brated by the Pilgrim Society. Not only in Plymouth and
New England has the day been commemorated but in other
parts of the country as well, particularly in New York.
Twice, in 1843 and again in 1850, Webster was the speaker
at the annual dinner of the New England Society of New
York.
Now the three hundredth anniversary approaches. And
it is being fittingly commemorated. The celebration is
international in its scope, beginning in July in England
in the original homes of the Pilgrims and the points of
their departure, continuing in Holland in the later summer,
and again in England at Southampton and Plymouth. It
will reach its height in America at Provincetown in the
fall and thence will touch all America and all the English-
*See the works of Webster, Vol. I, pp. 3 and 4. Little, Brown
and Company, 1854.
IXTRODUCTIOX 9
speaking world, celebrating especially November 11th,*
when the Mayflower compact was signed; Thanksgiving
Day, the most distinctive American festival — one of New
England origin ; and finally the three hundredth anniver-
sary of the landing at Plymouth, December 21, 1920.
THE PILGRIM CALENDAR
July 1620— January 1621
(All these dates, except where otherwise stated, are according
to Old Style. To conform to our present reckoning (New Style)
add in each case 10 days. Forefathers' Day is Old Style, Dec. 1 1 ;
New Style, Dec. 21. There are differences of opinion and uncer-
tainties in a few cases.)
July 25. The Mayflower leaves London.
29. Arrives at Southampton.
31. (Probably.) The Pilgrims leave Leyden.
Aug. 1. Pilgrims in Speedioell sail from Delftshaven.
5. Speedwell arrives at Southampton. (Bradford, "about
ye 5"; perhaps a day or two earlier.)
15. Both ships sail from Southampton.
22. Speedwell dangerously leaking. Puts in to Dartmouth.
Sept. 2. Sails from Dartmouth.
5. Speedwell again leaking.
7. Arrives at Plymouth.
12. Speedioell sails for London with twenty passengers.
16. Mayflower sails from Plymouth.
Oct. 3. First death on board. Heavy gales. Ship in danger.
Nov. 9. Signs of land.
10. Discovers Cape Cod (somewhere about Truro).
11. Cape Cod ( Provincetown ) Harbor. Go ashore to cut
wood. Compact signed in cabin.
12. Sunday. All on ship for rest and worship.
13. The sliallop puts ashore for mending. The women land
and wash soiled clothes.
•Armistice Day.
10 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
15. First exploring party of sixteen starts.
17. The party returns with Indian corn and report of
Indians.
22. Weather turns cold and stormy.
27. Second exploring party of thirty-four (nine sailors)
goes ashore. Peregrine White born.
* 29. Expedition returns with corn. Eighteen men remain
on shore over night.
Dec. 3. Much Illness from exposure.
6. Third exploring party seeks a harbor for settlement.
Eighteen — including Standish, Carver, Bradford, and
others — ^with ship's mate, who has been at Plymouth.
7. Mrs. Dorothy Bradford drowned.
8. The exploring party lands in the night on Clarke's
Island, Plymouth Harbor.
11. (Monday; New Style, 21). Twelve Pilgrims land
from shallop and explore. (Forefathers' Day as we
celebrate it.)
13. Return to the Mayfloicer at Provincetown Bay.
14. The Mayflower sails for Plymoutli.
16. Anchors in Plymouth Harbor.
17. Sunday. All stay on ship.
18. Exploring parties out on shore.
20. Town site determined.
21-22. Stormy days keep them on ship.
23. Timber felling begins.
25. The beginning of the first house.
26. Violent storm liolds them on the ship.
28. Gun platform on hill begun. Land in village allotted.
Many ill.
29-30. Stormy and kept to ship. Indian smokes seen.
THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT
In ye name of God, Amen. We whose names are under-
written, the loyall subjects of our dread soveraigne Lord,
IXTRODUCTIOX H
King James, by ye grace of God, Great Britaine, France,
& Ireland king, defender of ye faith, &c., haveing under-
taken, for 3'e glorie of God, and advancemente of ye
Christian faith, and honour of our king & countrie, a
vo3^age to plant ye first colonic in ye Northerne parts of
Virginia, doe by these presents solemnly & mutualy in ye
presence of God, and one of another, covenant & combine
our selves togeather into a civill body politick, for our
better ordering & preservation & furtherance of ye ends
aforesaid ; and by vertue hearof to enacte, constitute, and
frame such just & equall lawes, ordinances, acts, consti-
tutions, & offices, from time to time, as shall be thought
most meete & convenient for ye generall good of ye
Colonic, unto which we promise all due submission and
obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder sub-
scribed our names at Cap-Codd ye 11. of November, in ye
year of ye raigne of our soveraigne lord. King James, of
England, France, & Ireland ye eighteenth, and of Scot-
land ye fiftie fourth. Ano : Dom. 1620.
From Bradford's Hisiori/ "Of Plimoiifh I'lantntion."
INSCRIPTION ON Tin: PiL(;i!i:\[ :\iemorial monument,
rROVIXCETOWN, ]\rASS.
On N'ovember 21, 1620, the Mayflower, carrying 102
passengers, men and women and children, cast anchor in
this harbor 67 days from Plymouth, England.
The same day the 41 adult males in the company had
solemnly covenanted and combined themselves together
into a "civill body Politick."
This body politick, established and maintained on this
13 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
bleak and barren edge of a vast wilderness, a state without
a king or a noble, a church without a bishop or a priest, a
democratic commonwealth, the members of which were
straitly tied to all care of each other's good, and of the
whole by everyone.
With long-suffering devotion and sober resolution they
illustrated for the first time in history the principles of
civil and religious liberty and the practice of a genuine
democracy.
THEREFOEE— the remembrance of them shall be per-
petual in the vast republic that has inherited their ideals.
Charles W. Eliot.
A PAGEANT OF THE PILGRIMS
1620-1920
TERCENTENARY OF THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS
Auspices of Americanization Department Y. M. C. A. of Chicago
Scene I .
COURT OF CHARLES I
Scene at Hampton Court Gardens. Queen Henrietta Maria
and her ladies and favorites ' hold court. Dancing. They are
interrupted by Prynne and his followers, who rebuke the queen
for her levity.
Queen Guards
Page Trumpeter
Ladies and Gentlemen in Waiting Cromwell
Dance Ironsides
Dance (Faun and Nymphs) Prynne
King Mob (Puritans)
Aid
Scene II
PILGRIMS AT LEYDEN
Scene on the dock: Dutch burghers strolling about, women
knitting and marketing, children playing games. Pilgrims enter
INTRODUCTION 13
ready to embark. Children play together. Robinson, Brewster,
and Carver draw up resolutions. Prayer and hymn. Embarka-
tion.
Scene III
LANDING FROM THE MAYFLOWER
Great joy of Pilgrims — "Praise God." Settling. Hardships,
anxiety, and homesickness. Fear of savages. Samoset appears.
"Welcome Englishmen." Squanto shows planting and fishing.
Chief Massasoit forms treaty with the Pilgrims. Thanksgiving
feast after the good harvest of 1623. Games. Men enter sports
and athletics with the Indians.
Elder Robinson
Dutch Women
Squanto
Elder Brewster
Dutch Children
Chiefs
Elder Carver
Puritan Children
Dancers
Pilgrims
Massasoit
Bowmen
Puritan Women
Samoset
Scene IV
GROWTH OF COLONIES
Important Events in Early American History
Organization of Government. Governor of Plymouth Colony —
Bradford. Governor Winthrop. Founding of Massachusetts Bay
Colony, 1631. Connecticut, 1635 — Governor Winslow. Laws —
"The Body of Liberties." Harvard College founded, 1636. Com-
mon Schools system founded in 1647. First books printed, 1639 —
New England Almanac. Psalms, 1640.
Short Scenes in Early American Infe
The work of John Eliot among the Indians.
The story of Miles Standish, John Alden, and Priscilla.
Tableaux — Colonial Scene and Minuet.
Girl Scouts Colonial Ladies and Gentlemen
Betsy Ross Liberty Boys of '76
George Washington
Attack on Fort ]\fcHcnry — The Star Spangled Banner.
Gunners Flag Raiser Signal Corps
Pioneer Scene — Lincoln family and groups of pioneers.
Abraham Lincoln and Mrs. Lincoln Ladies
14
THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
Scene V
INTERLUDE — PROGRESS OF THE NATION
Allegorical dance of the years : past, present, and future.
Scene VI
AMERICA — THE LAND OF OPPORTUNITY
America, Opportunity, and Abundance Greet Progress, Arts, and
Sciences.
America Beauty Architecture
Opportunity Music Education
Progress Art Invention
Abundance Dancing Sciences
Harvest Children
Scene VII
PROCESSION OF NATIONS
Procession of Peoples of the Earth. They pass before the
Altar of Freedom and feed its flames with Loyalty and Service.
Foreign groups pass in order of arrival in America. Assemble
around altar. Rededication to the principles of Americanism.
Sing "America." i
Daniel Webster
the typical new englander
That Daniel Webster should have been the orator of the
bicentennial celebration of the Pilgrim landing at Ply-
mouth was most natural and fitting. He was at that time
the foremost orator in America and soon to be ranked, on
account of this very speech and others which shortly fol-
lowed, chronologically fourth of the world's orators. And
who shall say which is greatest — Demosthenes, Cicero,
Burke, or Webster? He was also in many marked phases
a typical representative of the New England for which he
spoke.
Neither of his parents was a descendant of Mayflower
Pilgrims, but they were of real Puritan stock,, and in his
childhood the family suffered the hardships and developed
the virtues of the Plymouth Puritans. In a speech de-
livered at Saratoga in 18^:0 Webster said :
"It did not happen to me to be l)orn in a log cabin ; but
my elder brothers and sisters were born in a log cabin,
raised amid the snowdrifts of New Hampshire, at a period
so early that, when the smoke first rose from its rude
cliimney and curled over the frozen hills, there was no
similar evidence of a white man's habitation between it
and the settlements on tlie rivers of Canada. Its remains
still exist. I make to it an annual visit. I carry my
children to it, to teach them the hardships endured by the
generations which have gone before them. I love to dwell
on the tender recollections, the kindred ties, the early affec-
tions, and the touching narratives and iacidents which
15
16 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
miiigie with all I know of this primitive family abode. I
weep to think that none of those who inhabited it are now
among the living; and if ever I am ashamed of it, or if
I ever fail in affectionate veneration for him who reared
it, and defended it against savage violence and destruction,
cherished all the domestic virtues beneath its roof, and,
through the fire and blood of a seven years' revolutionary
war, shrunk from no danger, no toil, no sacrifice, to serve
his country, and to raise his children to a condition better
than his own, may my name and the name of my posterity
be blotted forever from the memory of mankind !"*
Webster shared the Puritan reverence for education, and
gained an education by great sacrifice, made largely by his
father and the family. As a child he was sent to the dis-
trict school, following the wandering schoolmaster from
place to place, for the district was large and had three log
schoolhouses. The boy was thirteen when his father
reached a decision about his further education and an-
nounced his determination. Webster tells the story :t
"Of a hot day in July, it must have been in one of the
last years of Washington's administration, I was making
hay with my father, just where I now see a remaining
elm tree. About the middle of the forenoon the Honorable
Abiel Foster, M. C, who lived in Canterbury, six miles off,
called at the house, and came into the field to see my
father. He was a worthy man, college-learned, and had
been a minister, but was not a person of any considerable
natural power. My father was his friend and supporter.
He talked awhile in the field, and went on his way. Wlien
he was gone, my father called me to him, and we sat down
•National Edition of Webster's Writings. Vol. Ill, p. 30.
tCurtis: Life of Daniel Webster, Vol. I, pp. 17 and 18.
INTRODUCTION 17
beneath the elm on a haycock. He said, 'My son, that is
a worthy man; he is a member of Congress; he goes to
Philadelphia, and gets six dollars a da)% while I toil here.
It is because he had an education, which I never had. If
I had his early education I should have been in Phila-
delphia in his place. I came near it as it was. But I
missed it, and now I must work here.' 'My dear father,'
said I, 'you shall not work. Brother and I will work for
you, and will wear our hands out, and you shall rest.'
And I remember to have cried, and I cry now at the
recollection. 'My child,' said he, 'it is of no importance
to me. I now live but for my children. I could not give
your elder brothers the advantages of knowledge, but I
can do something for you. Exert yourself, improve your
opportunities, learn, learn, and when I am gone, you Mali
not need to go through the hardships which I have under-
gone, and which have made me an old man before my
time.' "
A year later young Daniel was entered at Exeter Acad-
emy, and after some tutoring, matriculated in Dartmouth
College in 1797, from which he was graduated in 1801.
"He was recognized by all as the foremost man in the col-
lege, as easily first, with no second. He read voraciously
all the English literature he could lay his hands on, and
remembered everything he read."* Of his own methods
he sa)'s:
"So much as I read, I made my own. When a half-hour.
or an hour at most, had elapsed. T closed my book, and
thought over what I had read. If there was anything
peculiarly interesting or striking in the passage, I en-
•Lodgre: Webster, p. Ifi.
18 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
deavored to recall it and lay it up in my memory, and
commonly could effect my object. Then if, in debate or
conversation afterward, any subject came up on which I
had read something, I could talk very easily so far as I
had read, and there I was very careful to stop."*
His religious training and attitude were those of the
Puritan, beginning as he himself tells, with his being
taught to read "by his mother or sister at so early an age
that he never knew the time when he could not peruse the
Bible with ease."t "His talents were known in the neigh-
borhood, and the passing teamsters, while they watered
their horses, delighted to get 'Webster's boy' with his
delicate look and great dark eyes, to come out beneath the
shade of the trees and read the Bible to them with all the
force of his childish eloquence."| This earliest textbook
was curiously the basis of his admission to Exeter Academy
as McMaster relates:
"Young Buckminster summoned Webster to his presence,
put on his hat, and said, 'Well, sir, what is your age?'
'Fourteen,' was the reply. 'Take this Bible, my lad, and
read that chapter,' The passage given him was St. Luke's
dramatic description of the conspiring of Judas with the
chief priests and scribes, of the Last Supper, of the
betrayal of Judas, of the three denials of Peter, and of
the scene in the house of the high priest. But young
Webster was equal to the test, and read the whole passage
to the end in a voice and with a fervor such as Master
Buckminster had never listened to before. 'Young man,'
♦McMaster: Life of Webster, pp. 17 and 18.
flbid, p. 9.
JLodge. p. 11.
INTRODUCTION 19
said he, 'you are qualified to enter this institution,' and no
more questions were put to him."*
THE DEFENDER OF THE CONSTITUTION
Webster's rightful claim to his title of "Defender of the
Constitution" is based, as were his opportunities for
education, on his father's character and conduct.
Ebenezer Webster, his father, just after the treason of
Arnold, guarded the general's tent at West Point, and
Washington said to him, "Captain Webster, I believe I
can trust you.'"t George Ticknor Curtis relates the elder
Webster's share in the adoption of the Constitution when
he was a member of the New Hampshire convention.
"Mr. Webster once repeated to me, with great pride, a
little speech made by his father before giving his vote for
the Constitution, and requested me, if I ever had an oppor-
tunity, to do something to perpetuate it. It is well known
that when the Convention of New Hampshire first
assembled, in February, 1788, a majority of the delegates
were found to be under instructions from their towns to
vote against the Constitution. This was the case with
Colonel Webster. But the Convention was adjourned to
meet again in June; and, in the meantime, Colonel Web-
ster obtained from his constituents permission to vote
according to his own judgment. When the vote was about
to be taken, he rose, and said : 'Mr. President, I have
listened to the arguments for and against the Constitution.
I am convinced such a government as that Constitution
*McMaster: Life of Wehster, pp. 15 ff.
tLodge : Daniel Webster, p. 7. '
20 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
will establish, if adopted — a government acting directly
on the people of the States — is necessary for the common
defense and the general welfare. It is the only government
which will enable us to pay off the national debt — the debt
which we owe for the Kevolution, and which we are bound
in honor fully and fairly to discharge. Besides, I have
followed the lead of Washington through seven years of
war, and I have never been misled. His name is subscribed
to this Constitution. He will not mislead us now. I
shall vote for its adoption.' "*
The story is further told of Daniel Webster's own first
acquaintance with the Constitution : "It was in the shop
kept by one of these early district school teachers that
Daniel, while still a mere child, first beheld a copy of the
Federal Constitution, printed with gorgeous adornment on
a cotton pocket handkerchief. Attracted probably by the
eagle, the flags, and the brilliant coloring, he bought the
handkerchief, read the text, and from this, he says, 'I
learned either that there was a Constitution or that there
were thirteen States'." t
But what this title really signifies and what Mr.
Webster stands for in our history is best summed up by
Henry Cabot Lodge in the last paragraph of his life of
Daniel Webster:
"But after all has been said, the question of most in-
terest is, what Mr. Webster represented, what he effected,
and what he means in our history. The answer is simple.
He stands today as the preeminent champion and exponent
of nationality. He said once, 'There are no Alleghanies in
♦Curtis: Li'/e o/ Wehster, Vol. I. p. 9.
tMcMtister : Daniel Webster, pp. 'J and 10.
INTRODUCTION 21
my politics,' and he spoke the exact truth. Mr. Webster
was thoroughly national. There is no taint of sectionalism
or narrow local prejudice about him. He towers up as an
American, a citizen of the United States in the fullest
sense of the v;ord. He did not invent the Union, or dis-
cover the doctrine of nationality. But he found the great
fact and the great principle ready to his hand, and he
lifted them up, and preached the gospel of nationality
throughout the length and breadth of the land. In his
fidelity to this cause he never wavered nor faltered. From
the first burst of boyish oratory to the sleepless nights at
Marshfield, when, waiting for death, he looked through the
window at the light which showed him the national flag
fluttering from its staff, his first thought was of a united
country. To his large nature the Union appealed power-
fully by the mere sense of magnitude which it conveyed.
The vision of future empire, the dream of the destiny of
an unbroken union touched and kindled his imagination.
He could hardly speak in public without an allusion to
the grandeur of American nationality, and a fervent appeal
to keep it sacred and intact. For fifty years, with reitera-
tion ever more frequent, sometimes with rich elaboration,
sometimes with brief and simple allusion, he poured this
message into the ears of a listening people. His words
passed into textbooks, and became the first declamations
of schoolboys. They were in everyone's mouth. They
sank into the hearts of the people, and became uncon-
sciously a part of their life and daily thoughts. When the
hour came, it was love for the Union and the sentiment of
nationality which nerved the aim of the North, and sus-
tained her courage. That love had been fostered, and that
22 THE AMERICAX SPIRIT
sentiment had been strengthened and vivified, by the life
and words of Webster. No one had done so much, or had
so large a share in this momentous task. Here lies the
debt which the American people owe to Webster, and here
is his meaning and importance in his own time and to us
today. His career, his intellect, and his achievements are
inseparably connected with the maintenance of a great
empire, and the fortunes of a great people. So long as
English oratory is read or studied, so long will his
speeches stand high in literature. So long as the Union
of these States endures, or holds a place in history, will
the name of Daniel Webster be honored and remembered,
and his stately eloquence find an echo in the hearts of his
countrymen."*
THE GREATEST AilERICAN ORATOR
The story of Webster's shyness in Exeter, brought on
doubtless by some of his associates ridiculing his rustic
manners and clothes, is well known. In his autobiography
he says : "There was one thin,2: I could not do — I could not
make a declamation, I could not speak before the school.
The kind and excellent Buckminster sought especially
to persuade me to perform the exercise of declamation
like the other boys, but I could not do it. Many a
piece did I commit to memory, and recite and rehearse
in my own room, over and over again, yet, when the
day came, when the school collected to hear declama-
tions, when my name was called, and I saw all eyes turned
to my seat, I could not raise myself from it. Sometimes
the instructors frowned, sometimes they smiled. Mr. Buck-
♦Lodge : Daniel Webster, pp. 361-2.
INTRODUCTION 23
minster always pressed and entreated, most winningly, that
I would venture, but I could never command sufficient
resolution. When the occasion was over, I went home and
wept bitter tears of mortification."*
In Dartmouth he rapidly outgrew this hindrance and
made several addresses which gave evidence of his future
line of thought and something of his coming power, t This
is particularly true of the oration which the citizens of
Hanover, the college town, asked him to deliver on the
Fourth of July, 1800. His studies as a lawyer and his
training in the courts, where he met as his opponents and
colleagues, the greatest lawyers of the day, rapidly per-
fected his style and developed, his resources; the following
account of his first speech in Congress, given on June 10,
1813, is not extravagant:
''The speech took the House by surprise, not so much
from its eloquence as from the vast amount of historical
knowledge and illustrative ability displayed in it. How a
person, untrained to forensic contests and unused to public
affairs could exhibit so much parliamentary tact, such nice
appreciation of the difficulties of a difficult question, and
such quiet facility in surmounting them, puzzled the mind.
The age and inexperience of the speaker had prepared the
House for no such display, and astonishment for a time
subdued the expression of its admiration.
" 'No member before,' says a person then in the House
'ever riveted the attention of the House so closely, in his
first speech. Members left their seats, where they could
not see the speaker face to face, and sat down, or stood on
the floor, fronting him. All listened attentively and
•Curtis: Lije of Daniel Webster, "Vol. I, p. 20.
tLodge: Daniel Webster, pp. 20-23.
24 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
silently, during the whole speech; and when it was over,
many went up and warmly congratulated the orator;
among whom were some, not the most niggard of their
compliments, who most dissented from the views he had
expressed.'
"Chief Justice Marshall, writing to a friend some time
after this speech says : 'At the time when this speech was
delivered, I did not know Mr. "Webster, but I was so much
struck with it that I did not hesitate then to state that
Mr. Webster was a very able man, and would become one
of the very first statesmen in America, and perhaps the
very first.' "* »
"The First Settlement of New England" was Webster's
first great oration — an important departure from his
speeches in court and Congress. The effect of this mem-
orable oration is described by Mr. Ticknor in Curtis's Life
of Webster :t
"I went to Plymouth on the 21st of December, 1820,
with Mr. and Mrs. Webster, Mr. and Mrs. I. P. Davis,
Miss Stockton, Mr. F. C. Gray, and Miss Mary Mason.
Where we stopped to dine we overtook fifty or sixty per-
sons, among whom were Colonel Perkins, Mrs. S. G.
Perkins, Mr. E. Everett, and many others of our acquaint-
ance. Mr. Webster had been a little uninterested during
the morning drive, wearied perhaps by his labors in the
convention, and partly occupied with thoughts of the fol-
lowing day. But at the little halfway house, where we all
crowded into two or three small rooms, we had a very
merry time, and Mr. Webster was as gay as anyone. In
♦Biographical notes by Mr. March, quoted in the Memoir by
Edward EAerett in the National Edition, Vol. I, p. 29.
tCurtis: Life of Daniel Webster, Vol. I, pp. 192-195.
INTRODUCTION 25
the eveninof at Plymouth everything li;ul llie air of a fete;
the houses of the principal street — in one of which we
lodged — were all lighted up, so that the street itself was
illuminated by them, and a band of music went up and
down, followed by a crowd, while it serenaded the many
strangers already collected from a distance for the great
centenary anniversary. Old Mr. Samuel Davis, a sort of
embodiment of the Pilgrim traditions of the seventeenth
century, and others of the principal inhabitants of Ply-
mouth paid their respects to Mr. Webster in the course of
the evening, and made it very agreeable, from the recol-
lections that they brought with them and the conversation
that naturally followed.
"In the morning I went with Mr. Webster to the church
where he was to deliver the oration. It was the old First
Church — Dr. Kendall's. He did not find the pulpit con-
venient for his purpose, and after making two or three
experiments, determined to speak from the deacon's seat
under it. An extemporaneous table, covered with a green
baize cloth, was arranged for the occasion, and, when the
procession entered the church, everything looked appro-
priate, though, when the arrangement was first suggested,
it sounded rather odd. The building was crowded ; indeed,
the streets had seemed so all the morning, for the weather
was fine, and the whole population was astir as for a
holiday. The oration was an hour and fifty minutes long,
but the whole of what was printed a year afterward, for it
was a 5^ear before it made its appearance, was not de-
livered. His manner was very fine — quite various in the
different parts. The passage about the slave trade was
delivered with a power of indignation such as T nevor
•?6 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
witnessed on any other occasion. That at the end, when,
spreading his arms as if to embrace them, he welcomed
future generations to the great inheritance which we
have enjoyed, was spoken with the most attractive sweet-
ness, and that peculiar smile which in him was always
so charming. The effect of the whole was very great. As
soon as he got home to our lodgings, all the principal
people then in Plymouth crowded about him. He was full
of animation and radiant with happiness. But there was
something about him very grand and imposing at the same
time. In a letter which I wrote the same day, I said
'he seemed as if he were like the mount that might not
be touched, and that burned with fire.' "
The Plymouth discourse was not published until about
a year after its delivery. Public expectation had been
greatly excited by the accounts of those who heard it, and
the commendations of the local press. The following let-
ter to Mr. Webster is a specimen of the manner in which
it was received.
(President John Adams to Mr. Webster.)
Montezillo, December 23, 1831.
"Dear Sir : I thank you for your discourse, delivered at
Plymouth, on the termination of the second century of the
landing of our fathers. Unable to read it from defect "of
sight, it was last night read to me by our friend Shaw.
The fullest justice that I could do it would be to transcribe
it at full length. It is the effort of a great mind richly
stored with every species of information. If there be an
American who can read it without tears, I am not that
American. It enters more perfectly into the genuine spirit
INTRODUCTION 27
of New England than any production I ever read. The
observations on the Greeks and Eomans; on colonization
in general ; on the ^Yest India Islands ; on the past, present,
and future of America, and on the slave trade are saga-
cious, profound, and affecting in a high degree.
"Mr. Burke is no longer entitled to the praise — the most
consummate orator of modern times.
""Wliat can I say of what regards myself? To my
humble name, 'Exegisti monumentum acre perennius.'
"This oration will be read five hundred years hence with
as much rapture as it was heard. It ought to be read at
the end of every century, and indeed at the end of every
year, forever and ever.
"I am, sir, with the profoundest esteem, your obliged
friend and very humble servant,
"John Adams."
The Honorable Daniel Webster.
Respecting subsequent appreciation, it can only be neces-
sary to say that this discourse has become classical in our
literature, and that it is generally regarded as the corner-
stone of 'Mr. "Webster's fame as an orator.
IMPORTAXT EVENTS IK THE LIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER
1782 January 18, birth in Salisbury, New Hampshire.
1794 Exeter Academy.
1797-1801 Dartmouth College.
1805 Admission to the bar in Boston.
1806 Death of his father.
1808 Marriage to Grace Fletcher of Hopkinton, New
Hampshire.
28 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
1813 Election to Congress from New Hampshire,
1813 Admission to the bar of the Supreme Court.
1814 Second election to Congress.
1816 Beginning of residence in Boston.
1823 Third term in Congress, representative of Boston
District.
1827 Election to Senate.
1828 Death of wife.
1829 Marriage to Caroline LeEoy of New York.
1839 Reelection to Senate.
1841 Secretary of State under Tyler.
1843 Ashburton Treaty.
1843 Eesignation from Secretaryship.
1844 Eeelection to Senate.
1850 Secretary of State under Fillmore.
1853 Defeat at Baltimore Convention.
1853 October 24, death at Marshfield, Massachusetts.
MOST FAMOUS ORATIONS OF DANIEL WEBSTEB
1818 Dartmouth College Case.
1820 Plymouth Speech.
1825 First Bunker Hill Monument Oration.
1826 Eulogy on Adams and Jefferson.
1830 Eeply to Hayne.
White Murder Trial.
1833 Character of Washington.
1833 "The Constitution is not a compact between
Sovereign States."
1843 Completion of the Monument.
1850 Seventh of March Speech.
1852 Addition to the Capitol.
Bibliographies
plymouth and the pilgrims
A. C. Addison: The Eoinantic Story of the Mayflower Pilgrims.
Boston, 1911. L. C. Page and Co. Very good illustrations.
Charles M. Andrews: The Fathers of New England. New Haven,
1919. Yale University Press.
E. Arber: The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers, 1606-1623. London,
1897. Ward & Downey. An excellently arranged compila-
tion of sources on the history of the Pilgrims.
Jane G. Austin: The Old Colony Stories: Betty Alden; A Name-
less Nobleman; Standish of Standish; Dr. LeBaron and His
Daughters; David Alden's Daughter, and other stories.
Boston. Houghton, Mifflin Co.
U. R. Bliss: The Old Colony Town. Boston, 1893. Houghton,
Mifflin Co.
William Bradford: History of Plimouth Plantation. Boston,
1898. Wright and Porter, State Printers.
John Brown: The Pilgrim Fathers of New England. New York,
1895. Fleming H. Revell.
Champlin Burrage: John Pory's Last Description of Plymouth
Colony. Boston, 1918. Houghton, Mifflin Co.
Ezra Hoyt Byington: The Puritan in England and New England.
Gives the point of view of the Pilgrim Fathers.
Mary Caroline Crawford: In the Days of the Pilgrim Fathers.
Boston. Little, Brown and Co.
H. M. Dexter: The England and Holland of the Pilgrims. 1905.
Morton Dexter: The Story of the Pilgrims. Boston, 1894. Con-
gregational S. S. and Publication Society.
Samuel Adams Drake: The Making of New England. New York,
1886. Scribner.
Agnes Edwards: Cape Cod, New and Old. Boston. Houghton,
Mifflin Co.
29
30 THE AMEPvICAX SPIRIT
Agnes Edwards: The Old Coast Road. From Boston to Plymouth.
Boston. Houghton, Mifflin Co.
John Abbott Goodwin: The Pilgrim Republic (new edition).
Boston. Houghton, Mifflin Co. Mr. Goodwin is the brother
of Mrs. Jane G. Austin, author of the "Old Colony Stories"
and an authority on Pilgrim times, customs, and manners.
William Elliot Griffis: The Pilgrims in Their Three Homes. Bos-
ton, 1898. Houghton, Mifflin Co.
William Elliot Griffis: Young People's History of the Pilgrims.
Boston. Houghton, Mifflin Co.
Charles Stedman Hanks: Our Plymouth Forefathers. Boston,
1008. Dana Estes & Co.
Annie Russell Marble: The Women WJto Came in the May-
flower. Boston. The Pilgrim Press.
Winthrop Packard: Old Plymouth Trails. Boston. Small, May-
nard and Co.
John Gorham Palfrey: History of New England. 5 vols. Boston,
1859. Little, Brown and Co.
Lyman P. Powell: Historic Toicns of New England. 5 vols. New
York, 1898. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Roland G. Usher: The Pilgrims and Their History. New York,
1918. Macmillan.
William B. Weeden: Economic and Social History of New Kny
land, 1620-1789. Boston. Houghton, Mifflin Co.
SUGGESTED POEMS ABOUT THE PILGRIMS
Kutlierine Lee Bates : America the Beautiful.
INI. E. Buhler: A Puritan Exhortation.
Amelia Josephine Burrr Abraham's Children.
Bliss Carman: The Return of the Mayflower.
Felicia Hemans: The Landing of the Pilgrims.
Alfred Noyes: The Mayflower.
IXTRODUCTIOX 31
PAINTINGS AND PICTURES ILLUSTRATING THE PILGRIM STORY
Bayes: Departure of the Mayflower (Perry 1334).
George H. Poughton: John Alden and Priscilla (Perry), 1337;
Pilgrim Exiles, 1336; Pilgrims Going to Church, 1339:
Priscilla, 1338; Return of the Mayflower, 1336B; Two
Farewells, 1335.
Charles W. Cope: Sailing of the Mayflower. (In the House
of Lords, London.) Departure of the Pilgrims from Delft
Haven (Perry 1331C).
James Montgomery Flagg: Landing of the Pilgrims. (Privately
owned in New Haven.)
W. F, Halsall: The Mayflower in Her First Morning at Sea.
(In Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth.) The Mayflower in Plymouth
Harbor. (In Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth.) (Perry 1331B.)
Charles Lucy: The Embarkation. (In Pilgrim Hall.)
Peter F. Rothermel: Landing of the Pilgrims. (Perry 13.32.)
Henry Sargent: Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. (In
Pilgrim Hall. Plymouth.)
Robert G. Shaw: The Landing." (In Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth.)
Robert M. Weir: Embarkation of the Pilgrims. (Panel of
Rotimda of Capitol at Washington.) (Perry 1331.)
Photographs and postcards of Plymouth Rock, Forefathers'
Monument, and other historical scenes may be had from Plymouth
dealers.
A remarkable series of reproductions in color has been re-
cently issued by the Old Colony Trust Company, Boston, in
their brochure "Ncav England — Old and New."
BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNTS OF WEBSTER
Sarah K. Bolton: Daniel Webster in Famous American States-
men. 1888. Crowell.
George Ticknor Curtis: Jyife of Daniel ^Vebster, 2 vols. New
York, 1870. D. Appleton Cd. This is the standard Web-
ster Biography.
33 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
Sidney George Fisher,: True Daniel Wehster. 1911. Lippincott.
Jolin Frost: Lije of Daniel Webster. 1869. Lee and Shepherd.
Elbert Hubbard: Daniel Webster. Little Journeys to the Homes
of American Statesmen. 1898. Putnam.
Cliarles Lanman: The Private Life of Daniel Webster. New York,
1852. Harper and Bros.
Henry Cabot Lodge: Daniel Webster in American Statesmen
Series. Boston, 1883. Houghton, Mifflin Co.
John Bach McMaster: Daniel Webster. New York, 1902. The
Century Co.
Frederic Austin Ogg: Daniel Webster. 1914. Jacobs.
Charles F. Richardson : Daniel Webster for Young Americans.
With essay by E. P. Whipple on Daniel Webster as a Master
of English Prose and Style. Boston, 1903. Little, Brown
and Co.
Carl Schurz: Daniel Webster, in Library of the World's Best
Literature. Vol. XXXVIII. An excellent, short, impartial
account.
Everett P. Wheeler: Daniel Webster in Great American Lawyers.
Vol. III. University edition. Philadelphia, 1908.
AVORKS OF WEBSTER
Edward Everett: Webster's Works. 6 Vols. Boston, 1851. Little,
Brown and Co. First volume contains a Biographical
Memoir of Daniel Webster.
National Edition, 18 Vols.: Writings and Speeches. Boston, 1903.
Little, Brown and Co.
E. P. Whipple: The Great Speeches and Debates of Daniel Web-
ster. Boston, 1879. Little, Brown and Co.
Several of Webster's orations have been edited and published
for school use. These volumes all contain excellent bibliographical
and critical material.
OEATIOXS
outlim;: of
The First Settlement of Xew England
T. Tlie Occasion — Beginning of the Third Centiin' of
Xew England History.
A. Xew England ancestors.
B. New England posterity.
II. The Purpose — Homage to Pilgrim Fathers.
A. The Place— Plymouth Eock.
B. The Time— December 23, 1620-1820.
C. Comparison with military events.
1. Marathon and Grecian glory.
2. Plymouth and American liberty.
III. The Pilgrim Motive.
A. Love of religious liberty.
B. Persecutions in England.
C. The departure to Holland.
D. Desire for a home.
E. New England tbe chosen land.
IV. The Peculiar Character of American Colonization.
A. The difference in motive.
B. The difference in organization.
C. New and stronger ties.
D. Eesulting progress.
V. Benefits of America.
A. American government.
1. Popular participation.
2. Distribution of property.
33
34 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
3. Departments of government — compari-
son with Greek and Roman.
B. Education in Kew England.
1. Early provision for schools.
3. Harvard College.
C. Eeligious principles.
VI. Duties of the Descendants of the Pilgrims.
A. Preservation of forms of government and
constitution.
B. The outlook for American literature.
C. The importance of Chtistianity.
YII. The Progress of New England.
A. One hundred years hence.
B. "Welcome to future generations.
FIRST SETTLEMENT OF N1<]W ENGLAXD
Oration in Commemoration of the Two Hundredth Anniversary.
Delivered at Plymoutli, on the 2'2d Day of December, 1820.
1. Let us rejoice that we behold fhis day. Let us be
thankful that we have lived to see the bright and happy
breaking of the auspicious morn which commences the
third century of the history of New England. Auspi-
cious, indeed — bringing a happiness beyond the common
allotment of Providence to men — full of present joy, and
gilding with bright beams the prospect of futurity, is the
dawn that awakens us to the commemoration of the land-
ing of the Pilgrims.
2. Living at an epoch which naturally marks the progress
of the history of our native land, we have come hither to
celebrate the great event with which that history com-
menced. Forever honored be this, the place of our
fathers' refuge ! Forever remembered the day which
saw them, weary and distressed, broken in everything but
spirit, poor in all but faith and courage, at last secure
from the dangers of wintry seas,. and impressing this shore
with the first footsteps of civilized man !
3. It is a noble faculty of nature which enables us to
connect our thoughts, our sympathies, and our happiness
with what is distant in place or time; and, looking before
and after, to hold communion at once with our ancestors
and our posterity. Human and mortal although we are,
we are nevertheless not mere insulated beings, without
relation to the past or the future. Neither the point of
time, nor the spot of earth, in wliich we physically live,
35
36 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
bounds our rational and intellectual enjo\Tnents, Wv
live in the past by a knowledge of its history; and in tlie
future by hope and anticipation. By ascending to an
association with our ancestors; by contemplating their
example and studying their character; by partaking their
sentiments, and imbibing their spirit; b}' accompanyinir
them in their toils, by sjTupathizing in their sufferings,
and rejoicing in their successes and their triumphs, we
seem to belong to their age and to mingle our own exist-
ence with theirs. TVe become their contemporaries, live
the lives which they lived, endure what they endured
and partake in the rewards which they enjoyed. And in
like planner, by running along the line of future time, by
contemplating the probable fortunes of those who are
coming after us, by attempting something which may
promote their happiness, and leave some not dishonor-
able memorial of ourselves for their regard, when we
shall sleep with the fathers, we protract our own earthly
being, and seem to crowd whatever is future, as well as
all that is past, into the narrow compass of our earthly
existence. As it is not a vain and false, but an ex-
alted and religious imagination, which leads us to raise
nur thoughts from the orb which, amidst this universe of
worlds, the Creator has given us to inhabit, and to send
them with something of the feeling which nature prompts,
and teaches to be proper among children of the same
Eternal Parent, to the contemplation of the myriads of
fellow-beings, with which his goodness has peopled the
infinite of space; so neither is it false nor vain to consider
ourselves as interested and connected with our whole
race, through all time : allied to our ancestors : allied to
FIRST SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 37
our posterity; closely compacted on all sides with others:
ourselves being but links in the great chain of being,
which begins with the origin of our race, runs onward
through its successive generations, binding together the
{)ast, the present, and the future, and terminating at last,
with the consummation of all things earthly, at the
throne of God.
4. We have come to this Rock, to record here our homage
for our Pilgrim Fathers ; our s}Tnpathy in their sufferings ;
our gratitude for their labors; our admiration of their
virtues ; our veneration for their piety ; and our attachment
to those principles of civil and religious liberty which they
encountered the dangers of the ocean, the storms of heaven,
the violence of savages, disease, exile, and famine, to enjoy
and establish. And we would leave here, also, for the gen-
erations which are rising up rapidly to fill our places,
some proof that we have endeavored to transmit the great
inheritance unimpaired; that in our estimate of public
principles and private virtue, in our veneration of religion
and piety, in our devotion to civil and religious liberty, in
our regard for whatever advances human knowledge or
improves human happiness, we are not altogether unworthy
of our origin.
5. There is a local feeling connected with this occasion,
too strong to be resisted; a sort of genius of the place,
which inspires and awes us. We feel that we are on the
spot where the first scene of our history was laid ; where
the hearths and altars of New England were first placed ;
where Christianity, and civilization, and letters made their
first lodgment, in a vast extent of cnuntvy, covered witli a
38 THE ame:"jcax spirit
wilderness, and peopled by roving barbarians. We are here,
at the season of the year at which the event took place.
The imagination irresistibly and rapidly draws around us
the principal features and the leading characters in the
original scene. We cast our eyes abroad on the ocean, and
we see where the little bark, with the interesting group
upon its deck, made its slow progress to the shore. We
look around us, and behold the hills and promontories
where the anxious eyes of our fathers first saw the places
of habitation and of rest. We feel the cold which be-
numbed, and listen to the winds which pierced them.
Beneath us is the Eock,* on which jSTew England received
the feet of the Pilgrims. We seem even to behold them,
as they struggle with the elements, and, with toilsome
efforts, gain the shore. We listen to the chiefs in coun-
cil; we see the unexampled exhibition of female fortitude
and resignation; we hear the whisperings of youthful im-
patience, and we see, what a painter of our own has also
represented by his pencil, f chilled and shivering childhood,
houseless but for a mother's arms, couchless but for a
mother's breast, till our own blood almost freezes. The
mild dignity of Carver| and of Bradford ; the decisive and
soldier-like air and manner of Standish; the devout
Brewster; the enterprising Allerton; the general firmness
and thoughtfulness of the whole band ; their conscious joy
for dangers escaped; their deep solicitude about dangers
•For further facts about the "Rock" see Palfrey's History of
New England, Vol. I, p. 171, or Harper's Encyclopedia of U. S.
History.
tHenry Sargent's historical painting, "The Landing- of th^ Pil-
grims at Plymouth." was presented by him to the Pilgrim .Society,
in whose hall it first appeared in 1824.
JFor a list of the pasi^engers on the Mayflower, see E. Arl^r'a
Story of the PilgrUn Fathers, or Harper's Encycl^: oedia of U. S.
History.
FIRST SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 39
to come; their trust in Heaven; their high religious faith,
full of confidence and anticipation; all these seem to be-
long to this place, and to be present upon this occasion,
to fill us with reverence and admiration.
6. The settlement of New England by the colony which
landed here* on the twenty-second t of December, sixteen
hundred and twenty, although not the first European es-
tablishment in what now constitutes the United States,
was yet so peculiar in its causes and character, and has
been followed and must still be followed by such conse-
quences, as to give it a high claim to lasting commemora-
tion. On these causes and consequences, more than on
its immediately attendant circumstances, its importance,
as an historical event, depends. Great actions and strik-
ing occurrences, having excited a temporary admiration,
often pass away and are forgotten, because they leave no
lasting results affecting the prosperity and happiness of
communities. Such is frequently the fortune of the most
brilliant military achievements. Of the ten thousand
battles which have been fought, of all the fields fertilized
with carnage, of the banners which have been bathed in
blood, of the warriors who have hoped that they had risen
from the field of conquest to a glory as bright and as dur-
able as the stars, how few that continue long to interest
mankind ! The victory of yesterday is reversed by the
defeat of today; the star of military glory, rising like a
meteor, like a meteor has fallen ; disgrace and disaster
hang on the heels of conquest and renown; victor and
•For the name of what is now Plymouth and the exact place
of the landing:, see Arber's Pilgrim Fathers, or Winsor's Narrative
and Critical History.
tThe twenty-first is now acknowledged to be the true anniver-
sary. Seo Palfrey's Neiv Enfiland.
40 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
vanquished presently pass away to oblivion, and the world
goes on in its course, with the loss only of so many lives
and so much treasure.
7. But if this be frequenth^ or generally, the fortune of
military achievements, it is not always so. There are en-
terprises, military as well as civil, which sometimes check
the current of events, give a new turn to human affairs,
and transmit their consequences through ages. Vi^e see
their importance in their results, and call them great, be-
cause great things follow. There have been battles which
have fixed the fate of nations. These come down to us
in history with a solid and permanent interest, not created
by a display of glittering armor, the rush of adverse bat-
talions, the sinking and rising of pennons, the flight, the
pursuit, and the victory; but by their effect in advancing
or retarding human knowledge, in overthrowing or estab-
lishing despotism, in extending or destroying human hap-
piness. When the traveler pauses on the plain of Mara-
thon, what are the emotions wdiich most strongly agitate
his breast? What is that glorious recollection which
thrills through his frame and suffuses his eyes? Not, I
imagine, that Grecian skill and Grecian valor were here
most signally displayed; but that Greece herself was
here saved. It is because to this spot, and to the event
which has rendered it immortal, he refers all the succeed-
ing glories of the republic. It is because, if that day had
gone othervdse, Greece had perished. It is because he
perceives that her philosophers and orators, her poets and
painters, her sculptors and architects, her governments
and free institutions, point baclcward to Marathon, and
that their future existence seems to have been suspended
FIRST SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND H
on the contingency, whether the Persian or the Grecian
banner should wave victorious in the beams of that day's
setting sun. And, as his imagination kindles at the retro-
spect, he is transported back to the interesting moment;
he counts the fearful odds of the contending hosts; his
interest for ttie result overwhelms him; he trembles, as if
it were still uncertain, and seems to doubt whether he may
consider Socrates and Plato, Demosthenes, Sophocles, and
Phidias, as secure, yet, to himself and to the world.
8. "If we conquer," said the Athenian commander, on
the approach of that decisive day, "if we conquer, we shall
make Athens the greatest city of Greece."* A prophecy,
how well fulfilled ! "If God prosper us," might have been
ihe more appropriate language of our fathers, when they
landed upon this Pock, "if God prosper us, we shall here
begin a work which shall last for ages; we shall plant
here a new society, in the principles of the fullest liberty
and the purest religion; we shall subdue this wilderness
which is before us; we shall fill this region of the great
continent, which stretches almost from pole to pole with
civilization and Christianity; the temples of the true God
shall rise where now ascends the smoke of idolatrous
sacrifice ; fields and gardens, the flowers of summer, and
the waving and golden harvest of autumn, shall spread
over a thousand hills, and stretch along a thousand valleys,
never yet, since the creation, reclaimed to the use of
civilized man. We shall whiten this coast with the canvas
of a prosperous commerce ; we shall stud the long
and winding shore with a hundred cities. That which
we sow in weakness shall be raised in strength. From
•Herodotus VI, paragraph 109.
42 ■ 'i'HE AMERICAN SPIRIT
our sincere, but houseless worship, there shall spring
splendid temples to record God's goodness; from the
simplicity of our social union, there shall arise wise and
politic constitutions of government, full of the liberty
which we ourselves bring and breathe; from our zeal for
learning, institutions shall spring which shalf scatter the
light of knowledge throughout the land, and, in time,
paying back where they have borrowed, shall contribute
their part to the great aggregate of human knowledge ;
and our descendants, through all generations, shall look
back to this spot, and to this hour, with unabated affection
and regard."
9. Of the motive which influenced the first settlers to a
voluntary exile, induced them to relinquish their native
country, and to seek an asylum in this then unexplored
wilderness, the first an4 principal, no doubt, were con-
nected with religion. They sought to enjoy a higher
degree of religious freedom, and what they esteemed a
purer form of religious worship, than was allowed to
their choice, or presented to their imitation, in the Old
World. The love of religious liberty is a stronger senti-
ment, when fully excited, than an attachment to civil or
political freedom. That freedom which the conscience
demands, and which men feel bound by their hopes of
salvation to contend for, can hardly fail to be attained.
Conscience, in the cause of religion and the worship of
the Deity, prepares the mind to act and to suffer beyond
almost all other causes. It sometimes gives an impulse
so irresistible, that no fetters of power or of opinion can
withstand it. History instructs us that this love of
FIRST SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 43
religious liberty, a compound sentiment in the breast of
man, made up of the clearest sense of right and the
liighest conviction of duty, is able to look the sternest
despotism in the face, and, with means apparently most
inadequate, to shake principalities and powers. There is
a boldness, a spirit of daring, in religious reformers, not
to be measured by the general rules which control men's
purposes and actions. If the hand of power be laid upon
it, this only seems to augment its force and its elasticity,
and to cause its action to be more formidable and violent.
Human invention has devised nothing, human power has
compassed nothing, that can forcibly restrain it, when it
breaks forth. Nothing can stop it, but to give way to it;
nothing can check it, but indulgence. It loses its power
only when it has gained its object. The principle of
toleration to which the world has come so slowly, is at
once the most just and the most wise of all principles.
Even when religious feeling takes a character of extrava-
gance and enthusiasm, and seems to threaten the order of
society and shake the columns of the social edifice, its
principal danger is in its restraint. If it be allowed in-
dulgence and expansion, like the elemental fires, it only
agitates, and perhaps purifies, the atmosphere ; while its
efforts to throw off restraint would burst the world asunder.
10. It is certain, that, although many of them were re-
publicans in principle, we have no evidence that our New
England ancestors would have emigrated, as they did, from
their own native country, would have become wanderers in
Europe, and finally would have undertaken the establish-
ment of a colony here, merely from their dislike of the
political systems of Europe. They fled not so much from
44 THE A3IEPvICAX SPIRIT
the civil government, as from the hierarchy, and the laws
which enforced conformity to the church establishment.
Mr. Robinson* had left England a? early as sixteen hun-
dred and eight, on account of the persecutions for non-
conformity, and had retired to Holland. He left England,
from no disappointed ambition in affairs of state, from no
regrets at the want of preferment in the church, nor from
any motive of distinction or of gain. Uniformity in matters
of religion was pressed with such extreme rigor, that a
voluntary exile seemed the most eligible mode of escaping
from the penalties of non-compliance. The accession of
Elizabeth had, it is true, quenched the fires of Smithfield,t
and put an end to the easy acquisition of the crown of
martvrdom. Her long reign had established the reforma-
tion, but toleration was a virtue beyond her conception,
and beyond the age. She left no example of it to her
successor; and he was not of a character which rendered
it probable that a sentiment either so wise or so liberal
should originate with him. At the present period it
seems incredible, that the learned,, accomplished, unas-
simiing, and inoffensive Robinson should neither be
tolerated in his peaceable mode of worship in his own
country, nor suffered quietly to depart from it. Yet such
was the fact. He left his country by stealth, that he
might elsewhere enjoy those rights which ought to belong
to men in all cotmtries. The departure of the Pilgrims
for Holland is deeply interesting, from its circumstances,
and also as it marks the character of the times, independ-
•John Robinson was pastor of the Separatist Coni^reeation at
Scrooby. England, and removed with its members to Holland in 160S.
tTo find out who kindled the "fires at Smithfield." and who suf-
fered in them, read Jesse's Memoirs of the Court of England, Vol. I.
Chapter XTV.
FIRST SETTLEMENT OF NEW KNGLAND 45
cntly of its conner'tion with naiiu's now incorporated ^
with the history of empire.- The embarkation was in-
tended to be made in such a manner that it might escape
the notice of the officers of government. Great pains had
been taken to secure boats, wliicli shonld come undiscovered
to the shore, and receive tlie fugitives; and frequent dis-
appointments had been experienced in this respect.
11. At length the appointed time* came, bringing with
it unusual severity of cold and rain. An unfrecjuented and
barren heath, on the shores of Lincolnshire, was the selected,
spot, where the feet of the Pilgrims were to tread, for the
last time, the land of their fathers. The vessel which was
to received them did not come until the next day, and in
the meantime the little band was collected, and men and
women and children and baggage were crowded together,
in melancholy and distressed confusion. The sea was
rough, and the women and children were already sick, from
their passage down the river to the place of embarkation on
the sea. At length the wished-for boat silently and fear-
fully approaches the shore, and men and women and chil-
dren, shaking with fear and with cold, as many as the small
vessel could bear, venture off on a dangerous sea. Immedi-
ately the advance of horses is heard from behind, armed
men appear, and those not yet embarked are seized, and
taken into custody. Tn the hurry of the moment, there had
been no regard to the keeping together of families, in the
first embarkation, ancV on account of the appearance of the
horsemen, the boat never returned for the residue. Those
who had got away, and those who had not, were in equal dis-
•The Scrooby congregation made its first attempt to leave Eng-
land in the autumn of 1607. Again in the spring of 160S their
departure was rudelv interrupted. Read the account in Palfrey's
History of New England, Vol. I. p. 13S. or consult Dexter. Story of
the Pilgriins
46 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
tress. A storm of great violence, and long duration, arose
at sea, which not onl}^ protracted the voyage, rendered dis-
tressing by the want of all those accommodations which the
interruption of the embarkation had occasioned, but also
forced the vessel out of her course, and menaced immediate
shipwreck; while those on shore, when they were dismissed
from the custody of the officers of justice, having no longer
homes or houses to retire to, and their friends and protectors
being already gone, became objects of necessary charity, as
well as of deep commiseration.
12. As this scene passes before us, we can hardly forbear
asking, whether this be a band of malefactors and felons
flying from justice. What are their crimes, that they hide
themselves in darkness? To what punishment are they
exposed that, to avoid it, men, and women, and children,
thus encounter the surf of the North Sea, and the terrors
of a night storm? What induces this armed pursuit,
and this arrest of fugitives, of all ages and both sexes?
Triith does not alloW us to answer these inquiries in a
manner that does credit to the wisdom or the justice
of the times. This was not the flight of guilt, but of
virtue. It was an humble and peaceable religion, flying
from causeless oppression. It was conscience, attempt-
ing to escape from the arbitrary rule of the Stuarts. It
was Eobinson and Brewster, leading off their little band
from their native soil, at first to find shelter on the shores
of the neighboring continent, but ultimately to come hither ;
and having surmounted all difficulties and braved a thou-
sand dangers, to find here a place of refuge and of rest.
Thanks be to God, that this spot was honored as the
asylum of religious liberty ! May its standard, reared here,
FIRST .SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND ^7
ri'inain forever! May it rise up as high as heaven till its
banner shall fan the air of both continents, and wave as* a
glorious ensign of peace and security to the nations !
13. The peculiar character, condition, and circumstances
of the colonies which introduced civilization and an English
race into New England, afford a most interesting and ex-
tensive topic of discussion. On these, much of our sub-
sequent character and fortune has depended. Their in-
fluence has essentially affected our whole history, through
the two centuries which have elapsed; and as they have
become intimately connected with government, laws, and
property, as well as with our opinions on the -subject of
religion and civil liberty, that influence is likely to con-
tinue to be felt through the centuries which shall suc-
ceed. Emigration from one region to another, and the
emission of colonies to people countries more or less dis-
tant from the residence of the parent stock, are common
incidents in the history of mankind; but it has not often,
perhaps never, happened, that the establishment of col-
onies should be attempted vinder circumstances, however
beset Avith present difficulties and dangers, yet so favor-
able to ultimate success, and so conducive to magnificent
results, as those which attended the first settlements on
this part of the American continent. In other instances,
emigration has proceeded from a less exalted purpose, in a
period of less general intelligence, or more without plan and
by accident; or under circumstances, physical and moral,
less favorable to the expectation of laying a foundation for
great public prosperity and future empire.
14. A great resemblance exists, obviously, between all
the English colonies established within the present limits
48 'i'HE AMEKICAX SPIRIT
of the United States; but the occasion attracts our atten-
flon more immediately to those which took possession of
New England, and the peculiarities of these furnisli a
stronsr contrast with most other instances of colonization.
15. Different, indeed, most widely different, from all
instances of emigration and plantation, were the condition,
the purposes, and the prospects of our fathers, when they
established their infant colony upon this spot. They came
hither to a land from which they were never to return.
Hither they had brought, and here they were to fix their
hopes, their attachments, and their object in life. Some
natural tears they shed, as they left the pleasant abodes
of their fathers, and some emotions they suppressed, when
the white cliffs of their native country, now seen for the
last time, grew dim to their sight. They were acting,
however, upon a resolution not to be daunted. With what-
ever stifled regrets, with whatever occasional hesitation,
with whatever appalling apprehensions, which might
sometimes arise with force to shake the firmest purpose,
they had yet committed themselves to Heaven and the
elements; and a thousand leagues of water soon interposed
to separate them forever from the region which gave them
birth. A new existence awaited them here; and when
they saw these shores, rough, cold, barbarous, and barren,
as then they were, they beheld their country. That mixed
and strong feeling, which we call love of country, and
which is, in general, never extinguished in the heart of
man, grasped and embraced its proper object here. What-
ever constitutes counirii, except the earth and the sun, all
the moral causes of affection and attachment which operate
FIRST SETTLEMENT OF* NEW ENGLAND .49
upon the heart, they had brought with them to their new
abode. Here were now their families and friends, their
homes, and their property. Before they reached ^the shore,
they had established the elements of a social system,* and
at a much earlier period had settled their forms of religious
worship. At the moment of their landing, therefore, they
possessed institutions of government, and institutions of
religion : and friends and families, and social and religious
institutions, constituted by consent, founded on choice and
preference, how nearly do these fill up our whole idea of
country! The morning that beamed on the first night of
their repose, saw the Pilgrims already at home in their
country. There were political institutions and civil lib-
erty, and religious worship. Poetry has fancied nothing,
in the wanderings of heroes, so distinct and characteristic.
Here was man, indeed, unprotected and unprovided for,
on the shore of a rude and fearful wilderness; but it was
politic, intelligent, and educated man. Everything was'
civilized but the physical world. Institutions, containing
in substance all that ages had done for human government,
were organized in a forest. Cultivated mind was to act on
uncultivated nature; and, more than all, a government
and a country were to commence, with the very first
foundation laid under the divine light of the Christian
religion. Happy auspices of a happy futurity ! WTio would
wish that his country's existence had otherwise begun?
Who would desire the power of going back to the ages of
fable? Who would wish for an origin obscured in t^e
•The Mayflower compact was .sig'ned on November It, 1620, by
^rty-one adult members of the Pilgrim company. The text is
nrinted in tho Introduction. For an account see Palfrey, Vol. I,
p. 164, or "Mourt's Relation."?" in Arber's Pilgrim Fathers.
50* THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
darkness of antiquity ? Who would wish for other emblaz-
oning of his country's heraldry, or other ornaments of her
genealogy,' than to be able to say that her first existence
was with intelligence, her first breath the inspiration of
liberty, her first principle the truth of divine religion?
16. Local attachments and sympathies would ere long
spring up in the breast of our ancestors, endearing to them
the place of their refuge. Whatever natural objects are
associated with interesting scenes and high efforts, obtain
a hold on human feeling, and demand from the heart a
sort of recognition and regard. This Eock soon became
hallowed in the esteem of the Pilgrims, and these hills
grateful to their sight. Neither they nor their children
were again to till the soil of England, nor again to traverse
the seas which surround her. But here was a new sea,
now open to their enterprise, and a new soil, which had
not failed to respond gratefully to their laborious indus-
try, and which was already assuming a robe of verdure.
Hardly had they provided shelter for the living, ere they
were summoned to erect sepulchers for the dead. The
ground had become sacred by inclosing the remains of
some of their companions and connections. A parent, a
child, a husband, or a wife had gone the way of all flesh,
and mingled with the dust of New England. We natu-
rally look with strong emotion to the spot, though it be
a wilderness, where the ashes of those we have loved repose.
Where the heart has laid down what it loved mo'st, there it
is desirous of laying itself down. No sculptured marble, no
enduring monument, no honorable inscription, no ever-
burning taper that would drive away the darkness of the%
tomb, can soften our sense of the reality of death, and
FIRST SETTLEMENT OK NEW ENGLAND 51
liallow to our feelings the groun.l which is to cover us,
like the consciousness that we shall sleep, dust to dust, with
the objects of our affections.
17. In a short time, other causes sprung up to bind the
Pilgrims with new cords to their chosen land. Children
were born, and the hopes of future generations arose, in
the spot of their new habitation. The second generation
found this the land of their nativit3% nd saw that they
were bound to its fortunes. They beheld their fathers'
graves around them, and while they rjud the memorials
of their toils and labors, they rejoiced in the inheritance
which they found bequeathed to them.
18. The second century opened upon New England
under circumstances which evinced that much had already
been accomplished, and that still better prospects and
brighter hopes were before her. She had laid, deep and
strong, the foundations of her society. Her religious prin-
ciples were firm, and her moral liabits exemplary. Her
public schools had begun to diffuse widely the elements of
knowledge; and the college, under the excellent and
acceptable administration of Leverett, had been raised to
a high degree of credit and usefulness.
19. But if our ancestors at the close of the first century
could look back with joy, and even admiration, at the
progress of the country, what emotions must we not feel,
when, from the point on which we stand, we also look
hack and run along the events oi the century which has
now closed! The country which then, as we have seen,
was thought deserving of a "noble name," — which then ha d
'•mightily increased," and become "very populous," — what
53 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
was it, in comparison with what our eyes behold it? At
that period, a very great proportion of its inhabitants
lived in the eastern section of Massachusetts proper, and
in Plymouth colony. In Connecticut, there were towns
along the coast, some of them respectable, but in the interior
all was a wilderness beyond Hartford. On Connecticut
]-iver, settlements had proceeded as far as Deerfield, and
Fort Dummer had been built near where is now the south
line of New Hampshire. In New Hampshire no settlement
was then begun thirty miles from the mouth of Piscataqua
River, and in what is now ]\[aine, the inhabitants were
confined to the coast. The aggregate of the whole popula-
tion of New England did not exceed one hundred and
sixty thousand. Its present amount (1820) is probably one
million seven hundred thousand. Instead of being confined
to its former limits, her population has rolled backward,
and filled up the spaces included within her actual local
boundaries. Not this only, but it has overflowed those
boundaries, and the waves of emigration havie pressed
farther and farther toward the west. The Alleghany has
not checked it; the banks of the Ohio have been covered
with it. New England farms, houses, villages, and churches
spread over and adorn the immense extent from the Ohio
to Lake Erie, and stretch along from the Alleghany on-
wards, beyond the Miamis, and towards the Falls of St.
Anthony. Two thousand miles westward from the rock
where their fathers landed, may now be found the sons
of the Pilgrims, cultivating smiling fields, rearing towns
and villages, and cherishing, we trust, the patrimonial
blessings of wisfe institutions, of liberty, and religion. The
world has seen nothing like this. Regions large enough to
FIRST SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 53
be empires, and which, half a century ago, were known
only as remote and unexplored wildernesses, are now-
teeming with population, and prosperous in all the great
concerns of life; in good governments, the means of sub-
sistence, and social happiness. It may be safely asserted,
that there are now more than a million of people, descend-
ants of New England ancestry, living, free and happy, in
regions which scarce sixty years ago were tracts of un-
penetrated forest. Nor do rivers, or mountains, or seas
resist the progress of industry and enterprise. Ere long,
the sons of the Pilgrims will be on the shores of the
Pacific* The imagination hardly keeps pace with the
progress of population, improvement, and civilization.
20. It is now five-and-forty years since the growth and
rising glory of America were portrayed in the English
parliament, with inimitable beauty, by the most consum-
mate oratort of modern times. Going back somewhat more
than half a century, and describing our progress as fore-
seen from that point by his amiable friend. Lord Bathur?t,
then living, he spoke of the wonderful progress which
America had made during the period of a single human
life. There is no American heart, I imagine, that does not
glow, both with conscious, patriotic pride, and admiration
for one of the happiest efforts of eloquence, so often as the
vision of "that little speck, scarce visible in the mass of
national interest, a small seminal principle, rather than a
formed body," and the progress of its astonishing develop-,
mont and growth, are recalled to the recollection. But a
•In reference to the fulfillment of this prediction, see Webster's
address at the celebration of the New England Society of New York,
December 22. 1850. See page 85.
tSee Burke's Conciliation.
54 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
stronger feeling might be produced, if we were able to
take up this prophetic description where he left it, and,
placing ourselves at the point of time in which he was
speaking, to set forth with equal felicity the subsequent
progress of the country. There is yet among the living a
most distinguished and venerable name, a descendant of
the Pilgrims; one who has been attended through life by
a great and fortunate genius; a man illustrious by his
own great merits, and favored of Heaven in the long
continuation of his years.* The time when the English
orator was thus speaking of America preceded but by a
few days the actual opening of the revolutionary drama
at Lexington. He to whom I have alluded, then at the
age of forl^, was among the most zealous and able de-
fenders of the violated rights of his country. He seemed
already to have filled a full measure of public service, and
attained an honorable fame. The moment was full of
difficulty and danger, and big with events of immeasurable
importance. The country was on the very brink of a civil
war, of which no man could foretell the duration or the
result. Something more than a courageous hope, or
characteristic ardor, would have been necessary to impress
the glorious prospect on his belief, if, at that moment,
before the sound of the first shock of actual war had
reached his ears, some attendant spirit had opened to him
the vision of the future; — if it had said to him, "The
blow is struck, and America is severed from England for-
ever!"— if it had informed him, that he himself, within
the next annual revolution of the sun, should put his own
liand to the great instrument of independence, and write
♦John Adams, second president of the United States.
FIRST SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 55
Ills name where all nations should behold it, and all time
should not efface it ; that ere long he himself should main-
tain the interests and represent the sovereignty of his
new-born country in the proudest courts of Europe; that
he should one day exercise her supreme magistracy; that
he should yet live to behold ten millions of fellow-citizens
paying him the homage of their deepest gratitude and
kindest affections; that he should see distinguished talent
and high public trust resting where his name rested; that
he should even see with his own unclouded eyes the close
of the second century of New England, he who had begun
life albiost with its commencement, and lived through
nearly half the whole history of his country; and that on
the morning of this auspicious day he should be found in
the political councils of his native state, revising, by the
light of experience, that system of government which forty
years before he had assisted to frame and establish; and,
great and happy as he should then behold his country,
there should be nothing in prospect to cloud the scene,
nothing to check the ardor of that confident and patriotic
hope which should glow in his bosom to the end of his
long protracted and happy life.
21. The nature and constitution of society and govern-
ment in this country are interesting topics, to which I
would devote what remains of the time allowed to this
occasion. Of our system of government the first thing to
be said is, that it is really and practically a free system.
It originates entirely with the people, and rests on no
other foundation than thoir assent. To judge of its actual
operation, it is not enough to look merely at the form of
56 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
its construction. The practical character of government
depends often on a variety of considerations, besides the
abstract frame of its constitutional organization. Among
these are the condition and tenure of property; the laws
regulating its alienation and descent; the presence or
absence of a military power; an armed or unarmed
yeomanry; the spirit of the age, and the degree of general
intelligence. In these respects it cannot be denied that
the circumstances of this country are most favorable to
the hope of maintaining the government of a great nation
on principles entirely popular. In the absence of military
power, the nature of government must essentially depend
on the manner in which property is holden and distributed.
There is a natural influence belonging to property, whether
it exists in many hands or few; and it is on the rights of
property that both despotism and unrestrained popular
violence ordinarily commence their attacks. Our ancestors
began their system of government here under a condition
of comparative equality in regard to wealth, and their
early laws were of a nature to favor and continue this
equality.
22. A republican form of government rests not more on
political constitutions, than on those laws which regulate
the descent and transmission of property. Governments
like ours could not have been maintained, where property
was holden according to the principles of the feudal system ;
nor, on the other hand, could the feudal constitution pos-
sibly exist with us. Our New England ancestors brought
hither no great capitals from Europe; and if they had,
there was nothing productive in which they could have
been invested. Thev left behind them the whole feudal
FIRST SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 57
policy of the other continent. They broke away at once
■from the system of military service established in the dark
ages, and which continues, down even to the present time,
more or less to affect the condition of property all over
Europe. Thev came to a new country. There were, as
yet, no lands yielding rent, and no tenants rendering serv-
ice. The whole soil was unreclaimed from barbarism.
They were themselves, either from their original condition,
or from the necessity of their common interest, nearly on
a general level in respect to property. Their situation
demanded a parceling out and division of the lands, and it
may be fairly said, that this necessary act fixed the future
frame and form of their government. The character of
their political institutions Avas determined by the funda-
mental laws respecting property. The laws rendered estates
divisible among sons and daughters. The right of primo-
geniture, at first limited and curtailed, was afterward
abolished. The property was all freehold. The entailment
of estates, long trusts, and the' other processes for fettering
and tying up inheritances, were not applicable to the con-
dition of society, and seldom made use of. On the con-
trary, alienation of the land was every way facilitated,
even to the subjecting of it to every species of debt. The
establishment of public registries, and the simplicity of
our forms of conveyance, have greatly facilitated the
change of real estate from one proprietor to another. The
consequence of all these causes has been 8 great subdivi-
sion of the soil, and a great equality of condition ; the
true basis, most certainly, of a popular government. *'If
the people," says Harrington, "hold three parts in four
of the territory, it is plain there can neither be any single
58 THE AaiERICAX SPIRIT
person nor nobility able to dispute the government with
them; in this case, therefore, except force he interposed,
they govern themselves."
23. The division of governments into departments, and
the division, again, of the legislative department into two
chambers, are essential provisions in our system. This
last, although not new in itself, yet seems to be new in its
application to governments wholly popular. The Grecian
republics, it is plain, knew nothing of it; and in Eome,
the check and balance of legislative power, such as it was,
lay between the people and the senate. Indeed, few things
are more difficult than to ascertain accurately the true
nature and construction of the Eoman commonwealth.
The relative power of the senate and the people, of the
consuls and the tribunes, appears not to have been at all
times the same, nor at any time accurately defined or
strictly observed. Cicero, indeed, describes to us an ad-
mirable arrangement of political power, and a balance of
the constitution, in that beautiful passage, in which he
compares the democracies of Greece with the Eoman com-
monwealth.
24. But at what time this wise system existed in this
perfection at Eome, no proofs remain to show. Her con-
stitution, originally framed for a monarchy, never seemed
to be adjusted in its several parts after the expulsion of
the kings. Liberty there was, but it was a dispiatatious,
an uncertain, an ill-secured liberty. The patrician and
the plebeian orders, instead of being matched and joined,
each in its just place and proportion, to sustain the fabric
FIRST SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 59
of the state, were rather like hostile powers, in perpetual
conflict. With us, an attempt has been made, and so far
not without success, to divide representation into cham-
bers, and, b}"" difference of age, character, qualification, or
mode of election, to establish salutary checks, in govern-
ments altogether elective.
25. Having detained you so long with these observations,
I must yet advert to another most interesting topic — the
free schools. In this particular, New England may be
allowed to claim, I think, a merit of a peculiar character.
She early adopted, and has constantly maintained the
principle, that is the undoubted right and the bounden
duty of government to provide for the instruction of all
youth. That which is elsewhere left to chance or to
charity, we secure by law. For the purpose of public in-
struction, we hold every man subject to taxation in pro-
portion to his property, and we look not to the question,
whether he himself have, or have not, children to be
benefited by the education for which he pays. We regard
it as a wise and liberal system of police, by which prop-
erty, and life, and the peace of society are secured. We
s^ek to prevent in some measure the extension of the penal
code, by inspiring a salutary and conservative principle
of virtue and of knowledge in an early age. We strive to
excite a feeling of respectability, and a sense of character,
by enlarging the capacity and increasing the sphere of
intellectual enjoyment. By general instruction, we seek,
as far as possible, to purify the whole moral atmosphere;
to keep good sentiments uppermost, and to turn the strong
current of feeling and opinion, as well as the censures of
60 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
tlie law and the denunciations of religion, against im-
morality and crime. AVe hope for a security beyond the
law, and above the law, in the prevalence of enlightened
and well-principled moral sentiment. We hope to con-
tinue and prolong the time, when, in the villages and
farm-houses of New England, there may be undisturbed
sleep within unbarred doors. And knowing that our
government rests directly on the public will, in order that
we maj'' preserve it, we endeavor to give a safe and proper
direction to that public will. AVe do not, indeed, expect
all men to be philosophers or statesmen ; but we confidently
trust, and our expectation of the duration of our system
of government rests on that trust, that by the diffusion of
general knowledge and good and virtuous sentiments, the
political fabric may be secure, as well against open violence
and overthrow, as against the slow, but sure, undermining
of licentiousness.
26. A conviction of the importance of public instruction
was one of the earliest sentiments of our ancestors. No
lawgiver of ancient or modern times has expressed more
just opinions, or adopted wiser measures, than the early
records of the colony of Plymouth show to have prevailed
here. Assembled on this very spot, a hundred and fifty-
three years ago, the legislature of this colony declared,
"Forasmuch as the maintenance of good literature doth
much tend to the advancement of the weal and flourish-
ing state of societies and republics, this court doth there-
fore order, that in whatever township in this government,
consisting of fifty families or upwards, any meet man
shall be obtained to teach a <rrammar-school, such town-
FIRST SETTLf:MENT OF NEW ENGLAND 61
ship shall allow at least twelve pounds, to be raised by
rate on all the inhabitants."
27. Having provided that all youth should be instructed
in the elements of learning by the institution of free
schools,* our ancestors had yet another duty to perform.
Men were to be educated for the professions and the public.
For this purpose, they founded the university, and with
incredible zeal and perseverance, they cherished and sup-
ported it, through all trials and discouragements. On the
subject of the university, it is not possible for a son of
New England to think without pleasure, or to speak with-
out emotion. Nothing confers more honor on the state
where it is established, or more utility on the country at
large. A respectable university is an establishment which
must be the work of time. If pecuniary means were not
wanting, no new institution could possess character and
respectability at once. We owe deep obligation to our
ancestors, who began, almost on the moment of their ar-
rival, the work of building up this institution.
28. Although establislu'd in a different government, the
colony of Plymoutli manifested warm friendship for Har-
vard college. At an early period, its government took
measures to promote a general subscription throughout all
the towns in this colony, in aid of its small funds. Other
colleges were subsequently founded and endowed, in other
places, as the ability of the ];)eople allowed; and we may
flatter ourselves that the means of education at present
enjoyed in New England are not only adequate to the
diffusion of the elements of knowledge among all classes,
•Find the date of the earliest free schools in Massachusetts Bay
Colony and of the laws on which they were founded. When was
Harvard founded?
62 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
but sufficient, also, for respectable attainments in literature
and the sciences.
29. Lastly, our ancestors founded their system of govern-
ment on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits,
they believed, cannot safely be trusted on any other foun-
dation than religious principle, nor any government be
secure which is not supported by moral habits. Living
under the heavenly light of revelation, they hoped to find
all the social dispositions, all the duties which men owe
to each other, and to society, enforced and performed.
AMiatever makes men good Christians makes them good
citizens. Our fathers came here to enjoy their religion free
and unmolested; and, at the end of two centuries, there
is nothing upon which we can pronounce more confidently,
nothing of which we can express a more deep and earnest
conviction, than of the inestimable importance of that
religion to man, both in regard to this life, and that which
is to come.
30. If the blessings of our political and social condition
have not been too highly estimated, we cannot well over-
rate the responsibility and duty which they impose upon
us. We hold these institutions of government, religion,
and learning, to be transmitted, as well as enjoyed. We
are in the line of conveyance, through which whatever has
been obtained by the spirit and efforts of our ancestors
is to be communicated to our children.
31. We are bound, not only to maintain the general
principles of public libert}^, but to support also those exist-
ing forms of government which have so well secured its
enjoyment, and so highly promoted the public prosperity.
FIRST SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 53
It is now more than thirty years that these states have
been united under the federal constitution, and whatever
fortune may await them hereafter, it is impossible that
this period of their history should not be regarded as
distinguislied b}' signal prosperity and success. They must
be sanguine indeed, who can hope for benefit from change.
Whatever division of the public judgment may have existed
in relation to particular measures of the government, all
must agree, one should think, in the opinion, that in its
general course it has been eminently productive of public
happiness. Its most ardent friends could not well have
hoped from it more than it has accomplished; and those
who disbelieved or doubted ought to feel less concern
about predictions which the event has not verified, than
pleasure in the good which has been obtained. Whoever
shall hereafter write this part of our history, although he
may see occasional errors or defects, will be able to record
no great failure in the ends and objects of government.
Still less will he be able to record any series of lawless
and despotic acts, or any successful usurpation. His page
will contain no exhibition of provinces depopulated, of
civil authority habitually trampled down by military power,
or of a community crushed by the burden of taxation. He
will speak, rather, of public liberty protected, and public
happiness advanced ; of increased revenue, and population
augmented beyond all example; of the growth of com-
merce, manufactures, and the arts; and of that happy
condition, in which the restraint and coercion of govern-
ment are almost invisible and imperceptible, and its influ-
ence felt only in the benefits which it confers. We can
entertain no better wish for our country, than that this
64 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
government may be preserved; nor have we a clearer duty
than to maintain and support it in the full exercise of all
its just constitutional powers.
32, The cause of science and literature also imposes upon
us an important and delicate trust. The wealth and
population of the country are now so far advanced as to
authorize the expectation of a correct literature and a
well formed taste, as well as respectable progress in the
abstruse sciences. The country has risen from a state of
colonial subjection; it has established an independent
government, and is now in the undisturbed enjoyment of
peace and political security. The elements of knowledge
are universally diflEused, and the reading portion of the
community is large. Let us hope that the present may be
an auspicious era of literature. If, almost on the day of
their landing, our ancestors founded schools and endowed
colleges, what obligations do not rest upon us, living under
circumstances so much more favorable both for providing
and for using the means of education? Literature be-
comes free institutions. It is the graceful ornament of
civil liberty, and a happy restraint on the asperities which
political controversies sometimes occasion. Just taste is
not only an embellishment of society, but it rises almost to
the rank of the virtues, and diffuses positive good through-
out the whole extent of its influence. There is a connec- .
tion between right feeling and right principles, and truth
in taste is allied with truth in moi:ality. With nothing in
our past history to discourage us, and with something in
our present condition and prospects to animate us, let us
hope, that, as it is our fortune to live in an age when
we may behold a wonderful advancement of the country
FIRST SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND 65
in all its other great interests, we may see also equal prog-
ress and success attend the cause of letters.
33. Finally, yet us not forget the religious character of
our origin. Our fathers were ])rought hither by their high
veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by
its light, and labored in its hope. They sought to incor-
porate its principles with the elements of their society,
and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions,
civil, political, or literary. Let us cherish these senti-
ments, and extend this influence still more widely; in
the full conviction, that that is the happiest society which
partakes in the highest degree of the mild and peaceful
spirit of Christianity.
34. The hours of this day are rapidly flying, and this
occasion will soon be passed. Neither we nor our children
can expect to behold its return. They are m the distant
regions of futurity, they exist only in the all-creating
power of God, who shall stand here a hundred years hence,
to trace, through us, their descent from the Pilgrims, and
to survey, as we have now surveyed, the progress of their
country, uuring the lapse of a century. We would antici-
pate their concurrence with us in our sentiments of deep
regard for our common ancestors. We would antici-
pate and partake the pleasure with which they will then
recount the steps of New England's advancement. On the
morning of that day, although it will not disturb us in our
repose, the voice of acclamation and gratitude, commencing
on the Eock of Plymouth, shall be transmitted through
millions of the sons of the Pilgrims, till it lose itself in
the murmurs of the Pacific seas.
66 THE AMERICAX SPIRIT
35. We would leave for the consideration of those who
shall then occupy our places, some proof that we hold the
blessings transmitted from our fathers in just estimation ;
some proof of our attachment to the cause of good govern-
ment, and of civil and religious liberty; some proof of a
sincere and ardent desire to promote everything which may
enlarge the understandings and improve the hearts of men.
And when, from the long distance of a hundred years, they
shall look back upon us, they shall know, at least, that we
possessed affections which, running backward and warming
with gratitude for what our ancestors have done for our
happiness, run forward also to our posterity, and meet
them with cordial salutation, ere yet they have arrived on
the shore of being.
36. Advance, then, ye future generations ! We would
hail you, as you rise in your long succession, to fill the
places which we now fill, and to taste the blessings of
existence where we are passing, and soon shall have passed,
our own human duration. We bid you welcome to this
pleasant land of the fathers. We bid you welcome to the
healthful skies and the verdant fields of New England.
We greet your accession to the great inheritance which we
have enjoyed. We welcome you to the blessings of good
government and religious liberty. We welcome you to the
treasures of science and the delights of learning. We wel-
come you to the transcendent sweets of domestic life, to
the happiness of kindred and parents, and children. We
welcome you to the immeasurable blessings of rational
existence, the immortal hope of Christianity, and the light
of everlasting truth !
THE GREEK REVOLUTION
From a speech delivered in the House of Representatives of the
United States, January 19, 1824.
It is certainly true that the just policy of this country
is, in the first place, a peaceful policy. No nation ever
had less to expect from forcible aggrandizement. The
mighty agents which are working out our greatness are
time, industry, and the arts. Our augmentation is by
growth, not by acquisition; by internal development, not
by external accession. ISTo schemes can be suggested to
us so magnificent as the prospect which a sober contem-
plation of our own condition, unaided by projects, unin-
fluenced b}^ ambition, fairly spreads before us. A country
of such vast extent, with such varieties of soil and climate,
with so much public spirit and private enterprise, with a
population increasing so much beyond former example,
with capacities of improvement not only unapplied or un-
exhausted, but even, in a great measure, as yet unex-
plored— so free in its institutions, so mild in its laws, so
secure in the title it confers on every man to his own
acquisitions; needs nothing but time and peace to carry
it forward to almost any point of advancement.
In the next place, I take it for granted that the policy
of this country, springing from the nature of our govern-
ment and the spirit of all our institutions, is, so far as it
respects the interesting questions which agitate the pres-
ent age, on the side of liberal and enlightened sentiments.
The age is extraordinary; the spirit that actuates it is pe-
culiar and marked ; and our own relation to the times we
67
g3 THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT
live in, and to the questions which interest them, is equally
marked and peculiar. We are placed, by our good fortune
and the wisdom and valor of our ancestors, in a condition
in which we can act no obscure part. Be it for honor, or
be it for dishonor, whatever we do is not likely to escape
the observation of the world. As one of the free states
among the nations, as a great and rapidly rising republic,
it would be impossible for us, if we were so disposed, to
prevent our principles, our sentiments, and our example
from producing some effect upon the opinions and hopes
of society throughout the civilized world. It rests prol)-
ably with ourselves to determine whether the influence of
these shall be salutary or pernicious.
It cannot be denied that the great political question of
this age is that between absolute and regulated govern-
ments. The substance of the controversy is whether
society shall have any part in its own government.
Whether the form of government shall be that of limited
monarchy, with more or less mixture of hereditary power,
or wholly elective or representative may perhaps be con-
sidered as subordinate. The main controversy is between
that absolute rule, which, while it promises to govern
well, means, nevertheless, to govern without control, and
that regulated or constitutional system which restrains
sovereign discretion, and asserts that society may claim
as matter of right some effective power in the establish-
ment of the laws which are to regulate it. The spirit of
the times sets with a most powerful current in favor of
these last-mentioned opinions. It is opposed, however,
whenever and wherever it shows itself, by certain of the
great potentates of Europe; and it is opposed on grounds
ORATIONS OF DAXIEL WEBSTER 69
as appiicable in one civilized nation as in another, and
which would justify such opposition in relation to the
United States, as well as in relation to any other state or
nation, if time and circumstance should render such opposi-
tion expedient.
TNTiat part it becomes this country to take on a question
of this sort, so far as it is called upon to take any part,
cannot be doubtful. Our side of this question is settled
for us, even without our owij volition. Our history, our
situation, our character, necessarily decide our position
and our course, before we have even time to ask whether
we have an option. Our place is on the side of free institu-
tions. From the earliest settlement of these states, their
inhabitants were accustomed, in a greater or less degree,
to the enjoyment of the powers of self-government; and
for the last half-century they have sustained systems of
government entirely representative, jielding to themselves
the greatest possible prosperity, and not leaving them
without distinction and respect among the nations of the
earth. This system we are not likely to abandon; and
while we shall no farther recommend its adoption to other
nations, in whole or in part, than it may recommend itself
by its visible influence on our own growth and prosperity,
we are, nevertheless, interested to resist the establishment
of doctrines which deny the legality of its foundations.
We stand as an equal among nations, claiming the full
benefit of the established international law; and it is our
duty to oppose, from the earliest to the latest moment,
any innovations upon that code which shall bring into
doubt or question our own equal and independent rights.
70 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT »
From an address delivered at the laying of the corner-stone of the
Bunker Hill Monument at Charlestown, Mass., June 17, 1825.
Nearer to our times, more closely connected with our
fates, and therefore still more interesting to our feelings
and affections, is the settlement of our own country by
colonists from England. We cherish every memorial of
these worthy ancestors; we celebrate their patience and
fortitude ; we admire their daring enterprise ; we teach our
children to venerate their piety; and we are Justly proud
of being descended from men who have set the world an
example of founding civil institutions on the great and
united principles of human freedom and human knowl-
edge. To us, their children, the story of their labors and
sufferings can never be without its interest. We shall not
stand unmoved on the shore of Plymouth, while the sea
continues to wasli it ; nor will our brethren in another early
and ancient colony forget the place of its first establish-
ment, till their river shall cease to flow by it. No vigor
of youth, no maturity of manhood, will lead the nation to
forget the spots where its infancy was cradled and de-
fended.
The great wheel of political revolution began to move
in America. Here its rotation was guarded, regular, and
safe. Transferred to the other continent, from unfor-
tunate but natural causes, it received an irregular and
violent impulse; it whirled along with a fearful celerity;
till at length, like the chariot-wheels in the races of
antiquity, it took fire from the rapidity of its own motion,
and blazed onward, spreading conflagration and terror
around.
ORATIONS OF DANIEL WEBSTER 71
We learn from the result of this experiment, how for-
tunate was our own condition, and how admirably the
character of our people was calculated for making the
great example of popular governments. The possession
of power did not turn the heads of the American people,
for they had long been in the habit of exercising a great
portion of self-control. Although the paramount authority
of the parent state existed over them, yet a large field of
legislation had always been open to our colonial a«-
semblies. They were accustomed to representative bodies
and the forms of free government; they understood the
doctrine of the division of power among different branches,
and the necessity of checks on each. The character of our
countrymen, moreover, was sober, moral, and religious ;
and there was little in the change to shock their feelings
of justice and humanity, or even to disturb an honest
prejudice. We had no domestic throne to overturn, no
privileged orders to cast down, no violent changes of prop-
erty to encounter. In the American revolution, no man
sought or wished for more than to defend and enjoy his
own. None hoped for plunder or for spoil. Eapacity was
unknown to it; the ax was not among the instruments of
its accomplishment; and we all know that it could not have
lived a single day under any well-founded imputation of
possessing a tendency adverse to the Christian religion.
And, now, let us indulge an honest exultation in the
conviction of the benefit which the example of our coun-
try has produced, and is likely to produce, on human
freedom and human happiness. Let us endeavor to com-
prehend in all its magnitude, and to feel in all its impor-
tance, the part assigned to us in the great drama of human
72 THE AMEEICAN SPIRIT
affairs. We are placed at the head of the system of
representative and popular government. Thus far our
example shows that such governments are compatible, not
only with respectability and power, but with repose, with
peace, with security of personal rights, with good laws,
and a just administration.
We are not propagandists. Wherever other systems are
preferred, either as being thought better in themselves, or
as better suited to existing conditions, we leave the prefer-
ence to be enjoyed. Our history hitherto proves, however,
that the popular form is practicable, and that with wisdom
and knowledge men may govern themselves; and the duty
incumbent on us is to preserve the consistency of this
cheering example, and take care that nothing may weaken
its authority with the world. If, in our case, the represent-
ative system ultimately fail, popular government must be
pronounced impossible. No combination of circumstances
more favorable to the experiment can ever be expected to
occur. The last hopes of mankind, therefore, rest with
us; and if it should be proclaimed, that our example had
become an argument against the experiment, the knell of
popular liberty would be sounded throughout the earth.
These are excitements to duty; but they are not sug-
gestions of doubt. Our history and our condition, all
that is gone before us, and all that surrounds us, author-
ize the belief, that popular governments, though subject
to occasional variations, perhaps not always for the better,
in form, may yet, in their general character, be as durable
and permanent as other systems. We know, indeed, that
in our country any other is impossible. The principle of
ORATIONS OF DAl^^IEL WEBSTER 73
free governments adheres to the American soil. It is
bedded in it, immovable as its mountains.
And let the sacred obligations which have devolved on
this generation, and on us, sink deep into our hearts.
Those are daily dropping from among us who established
our liberty and our government. The great trust now
descends to new hands. Let us apply ourselves to that
which is presented to us, as our appropriate object. We
can win no laurels in a war for independence. Earlier
and worthier hands have gathered them all. Nor are
there places for us by the side of Solon, and Alfred, and
other founders of states. Our fathers have filled them.
But there remains to us a great duty of defense and pres-
ervation : and there is opened to us, also, a noble pursuit,
to which the spirit of the times strongly invites us. Our
proper business is improvement. Let our age be the age
of improvement. In a day of peace, let us advance the
arts of peace and the works of peace. Let us develop the
resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its
institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether
we also, in our day and generation, may not perform
something worthy to be remembered. Let us cultivate a
true spirit of union and harmony. In pursuing the great
objects which our condition points out to us, let us act
under a settled conviction, and an habitual feeling, that
these twenty-four states are one country. Let our con-
ceptions be enlarged to the circle of our duties. Let us
extend our ideas over the whole of the vast field in which
we are called to act. Let our object be, our country, our
WHOLE COUNTRY, AND NOTHING BUT OUR COUNTRY. And,
by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a
74 THE AMERICAN SriKIT
vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror,
but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the
world may gaze with admiration forever !
Ar>A]\IS AND JEFFERSON
From a discourse in commemoration of the lives and services of
Jolin Adams and Tliomas Jefferson, delivered in Faneuil Hall.
August 2, 1S26.
And now, fellow-citizens, let us not retire from this
occasion without a deep and solemn conviction of the du-
ties which have devolved upon us. This lovely land, this
glorious liberty, these benign institutions, the dear purchase
of our fathers, are ours; ours to enjoy, ours to preserve,
ours to transmit. Generations past and generations to
come hold us responsible for this sacred trust. Our
fathers, from behind, admonish us, with their anxious
paternal voices; posterity calls out to us, from the bosom
of the future; the world turns hither its solicitous eyes;
all, all conjure us to act wisely, and faitMully, in the re-
lation which WG sustain. We can never, indeed, pay the
debt which is upon us; but by virtue, by morality, by
religion, by tlie cultivation of every good principle and
every good habit, we may hope to enjoy the blessing,
through our day, and to leave it unimpaired to our chil-
dren. Let us feel deeply how much of what we are and
of what we possess we owe to this liberty, and to these
institutions of government. Nature has, indeed, given
us a soil which yields bounteously to the hands of in-
dustry', the mighty and fruitful ocean is before us, and
the skies over our heads shed health and visjor. But what
ORATIONS OF D.\XIEL WEBSTER 75
are lands, and seas, and skies to civilized man, without
society, without knowledge, without morals, without re-
ligious culture; and how can these be enjoyed, in all their
extent and all their excellence, but under the protection
of wise institutions and a free government? Fellow-
citizens, there is not one of us, there is not one of us here
present, who does not, at this moment, and at every mo-
ment, experience in his own condition, and in the condition
of those most near and dear to him, the influence and the
benefits of this liberty and these institutions. Let us then
acknowledge the blessing, let us feel it deeply and power-
fully, let us cherish a strong affection for it, and resolve
to jnaintain and perpetuate it. The blood of our fathers,
let it not have been shed in vain; the great hope of
posterity, let it not be blasted.
The striking attitude, too, in which we stand to the
world around us, a topic to which, I fear, I advert too
often, and dwell on too long, cannot be altogether omitted
here. Neither individuals nor nations can perform their
part well, until they understand and feel its importance,
and comprehend and justly appreciate all the duties be-
longing to it. It is not to inflate national vanity, nor to
swell a light and empty feeling of self-importance, but it
is that we may judge justly of our situation, and of our
own duties, that I earnestly urge this consideration of our
position and our character among the nations of the earth.
It cannot be denied, but by those who would dispute
against the sun, that with America, and in America, a
new era commences in human affairs. This era is distin-
guished by free representative governments, by entire re-
ligious liberty, by improved systems of national inter-
76 THE AMEEIC.\N SPIRIT
course, by a newly awakened and an unconquerable spirit
of free inquiry and by a diffusion of knowledge through
the community, such as he has been before altogether un-
known and unheard of. America, America, our country,
fellow-citizens, our own dear and native land, is insepa-
rably connected, fast bound up, in fortune and by fate,
with these great interests. If they fall, we fall with them ;
if they stand, it will be because we have upholden them.
Let us contemplate, then, this connection, which binds the
prosperity of others to our own; and let us manfully dis-
charge all the duties which it imposes. If we cherish the
virtues and the principles of our fathers. Heaven will
assist us to carry on the work of human liberty and hujnan
happiness. Auspicious omens cheer us. Great examples
are before us. Our own firmament now shines brightly
upon our path. Washington is in the clear, upper sky.
These other stars have now joined the American constella-
tion; they circle round their center, and the heavens beam
with new light. Beneath this illumination let us walk the
course of life, and at its close devoutly commend our be-
loved country, the conmion parent of us all, to the Divine
Benignity.
THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON
From a speech delivered at a public dinner in honor of the Cen-
tennial birthday of Washington, at Washington, D. C, Feb-
ruary 22, 1832.
I remarked, gentlemen, that the whole world was and
is interested in the result of this experiment. And is it
not so? Do we deceive ourselves, or is it true that at this
ORATIONS OF DAXIEL WEBSTER 77
inomeut the career which this government is running is
among the most attractive objects to the civilized world?
Do we deceive ourselves, or is it true that at this moment
that love of liberty and that understanding of its true
principles which are flying over the whole earth, as on the
wings of all the winds, are really and truly of American
origin ?
The spirit of human liberty and of free government,
nurtured and grown into strength and beauty in America,
lias stretched its course into the midst of the nations. Like
an emanation from heaven, it has gone forth, and it will
not return void. ' It must change, it is fast changing the
face of the earth. Our great, our high duty is to show, in
our own example, that this spirit is a spirit of health as
well as a spirit of power; that its benignity is as great
as its strength; that its efficiency to secure individual
rights, social relations, and moral order, is equal to the
irresistible force with which it prostrates principalities and
powers. The world, at this moment, is regarding us with
a willing, but something of a fearful, admiration. Its deep
and awful anxiety is to learn whether free states may be
stable as well as free; whether popular power may be
trusted as well as feared; in short, whether wise, regular,
and virtuous self-government is a vision for the contempla-
tion of theorists, or a truth estal)lished, illustrated, and
brought into practice in the country of Washington.
For the earth which we inhabit, and the whole circle of
the sun, for all the unborn races of mankind, we seem to
hold in our hands, for their weal or woe, the fate of this
experiment. If we fail, who shall venture the repetition ?
I f our example shall prove to be one, not of encouragement,
78 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
but of terror, not fit to be imitated, but fit only to be
shunned, where else shall the world look for free models?
If this great Western Sun be struck out of the firmament,
at what other fountain shall the lamp of liberty hereafter
be lighted? What other orb shall emit a ray to glimmer,
even, on the darkness of the world ?
There is no danger of our overrating or overstating the
important part which we are now acting in human affairs.
It should not flatter our personal self-respect, but it should
reanimate our patriotic virtues, and inspire us with a
deeper and more solemn sense, both of our privileges and of
our duties. .We cannot wish better for our country, nor
for the world, than that the same spirit which influenced
Washington may influence all who succeed him; and that
the same blessing from above, which attended his efforts,
may also attend theirs.
The political prosperity which this country has attained,
and which it now enjoys, it has acquired mainly through
the instrumentality of the present government. While this
agent continues, the capacity of attaining to still higher
degrees of prosperity exists also. We have, while this
lasts, a political life capable of beneficial exertion, with
power to resist or overcome misfortunes, to sustain us
against the ordinary accidents of human affairs, and to
promote, by active efforts, every public interest. But dis-
memberment strikes at the very being which preserves
these faculties. It would lay its rude and ruthless hand
on this great agent itself. It would sweep away, not only
what we possess, but all power of regaining lost, or acquir-
ing new possessions. It would leave the country, not only
bereft of its prosperity and liappiness, but without limbs.
ORATIONS OF DANIEL WEBSTER 79
or organs, or faculties, by which to exert itself hereafter
in the pursuit of that prosperity and happiness.
Other misfortunes may be borne, or their effects over-
come. If disastrous war should sweep our commerce from
the ocean, another generation may renew it; if it exhaust
our treasury, future industry may replenish it; if it desolate
and lay waste our fields, still, under a new cultivation, they
will grow green again, and ripen to future harvests. It
were but a trifle even if the walls of yonder capitol were
to crumble, if its lofty pillars should fall, and its gorgeous
decorations be all covered by the dusts of the valley. All
these might be rebuilt. But who shall reconstruct the
fabric of demolished government? Who shall rear again
the well proportioned columns of constitutional liberty?
Who shall frame together the skilful architecture which
unites national sovereignty with state rights, individual
security, and public prosperity? No, if these columns
fall, they will be raised not again. Like the Coliseum
and the Parthenon, they will be destined to a mournful,
a melancholy immortality. Bitterer tears, however, will
flow over them, than were ever shed over the monuments
of Eoman or Grecian art; for they will be the remnants
of a more glorious edifice than Greece or Rome ever saw —
the edifice of constitutional American liberty.
But let us hope for better things. Let us trust in that
gracious Being who has hitherto held our country as in
the hollow of his hand. Let us trust to the vii^tue and the
intelligence of the people, and to the efficacy of religious
obligation. Let us trust t6 the influence of Washington's
example. Let us hope that that fear of Heaven which
expels all other fear, and that regard to duty which
80 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
transcends all other regard, may influence public men and
private citizens, and lead our country still onward in her
happy career. Full of these gratifying anticipations and
hopes, let us look forward to the end of that century which
is now c-omraenced. A hundred years hence, otlier disciples
of "Washington will celebrate his birth, with no less of
sincere admiration than we now commemorate it. Wlien
they shall meet, as we now meet, to do themselves and him
that honor, so surely as they shall see the blue summits
of his native mountains rise in the horizon, so surely as
they shall behold the rivor ou whose banks he lived, and
on whose banks he rests, still flowing on toward the sea, so
surely may they see, as we now see, the flag of the Union
floating on the top of the capitol; and then, as now, may
the sun in his course visit no land more free, more happy,
more lovely, than this our own country !
Gentlemen, I propose — "The Memory of George
Washington."
THE LAXDIXG AT PLYMOUTH
From a speech delivered at the public dinner of the New England
Society of New York in commemoration of the landing of the
Pilgrims, December 22, 1S43.
The free nature of our institutions, and the popular form
of those governments which have come down to us from
the Eock of Plymouth, give scope to intelligence, to talent,
enterprise, and public spirit, from all classes making up
the great body of the community
I see today, and we all see, that the descendants of the
Puritans who landed upon the Eock of Plymouth ; the
OKATIO^S OF D-VMEL WEBSTER 81
followers of Kaloigh who settled Virginia and North
(,'arolina; lie who lives where the truncheon of empire, so
to speak, was borne by Smitli; the inhabitants of doorgia:
he who settled under the auspices of France at the mouth
of the Mississippi ; the Swede on the Delaware ; tlie Quaker
of Pennsylvania — all lind, at this day, their common inter-
est, tlieir common protection, their common glory, under
the united government, which leaves them all, neverthe-
less, in the administration of their own municipal and local
affairs, to be Frenchmen, or Swedes, or Quakers, or what-
ever they choose. And when one considers that this system
of government, I will not say has produced, because Gixl
and nature and circumstances have had an agency in it —
but when it is considered that this system has not pre-
vented, but rather encouraged, the gro^^'th of the people
of this country from three millions, on the glorious 4th
of July, 17TG, to seventeen millions now, who is there that
will say. upon this hemisphere — nay, who is there that will
stand up in any hemisphere, who is there in any part of
the world, that will say that the great experiment of a
united republic has faikxl in America ?
The settlement at Plymouth is an event that in all time
since, and in all time to come, and more in times to come
than in times past, must stand out in great and striking
characteristics to the admiration of the world. The sun's
return to his winter solstice, in 1(V20, is the epoch from
which he dates his first acquaintance with the small people,
now one of the happiest, and destined to be one of the
greatest, tliat his rays fall upon; and his annual visita-
tion, from that day to this, to our frozen region, has
enabled him to see that progress, PROGRESS, was the
83 THE AMERIC-\X SPIRIT
characteristic of tJiat small people. He lias seen them from
a handful, that one of his beams coming through a key-
hole might illuminate, spread over a hemisphere, which
he cannot enlighten under the slightest eclipse. Xor,
though this globe should revolve round him for tens of
hundreds of thousands of years, will he see such another
incipient colonization upon any part of ""his attendant upon
his mighty orb.
There is not. Gentlemen, and we may as well admit it,
in any history of the past, another epoch from which so
many great events have taken a turn; events which, while
important to us, are equally important to the country
from whence we came. The settlement of Plymouth —
concurring, I always wish to be understood, with that of
Virginia — was the settlement of Xew England by colonies
of Old England. Xow, Gentlemen, take these two ideas
and run out the thoughts suggested by both. "\Miat has
been and what is to be, Old England? \Miat has been,
what is, and what may be, in the providence of God, Xew
England, with her neighbors and associates? I would not
dwell, Gentlemen, with any particular emphasis upon the
sentiment, which I nevertheless entertain, with respect to
the great diversity' in the races of men. I do not know how
far in that respect I might not encroach on those mysteries
of Providence which, while I adore, I may not compre-
hend; but it does seem to me to be very remarkable, that
we may go back to the time when Xew England, or those
who founded it, were subtracted from Old England; and
both Old England and Xew England went on. neverthe-
less, in their mighty career of progress and power.
T^t me be?in with Xew England for a moment. "\Miat
ORATIONS OF 1)AN1J:L WEBSTER 83
•
has resulted, embracing, as I say, the nearly contemp-
oraneous settlement of Virginia, what has resulted from
the planting upon this continent of two or three slender
colonies from the mother country? Gentlemen, the great
epitaph commemorative of the character and the worth,
the discoveries and glory of Columbus was that he had
given a new world to the crowns of Castile and Aragon.
Gentlemen, this is a great mistake. It does not come up at
all to the great merits of Columbus. He gave the territory
of the southern hemisphere to the crowns of Castile and
Aragon ; but as a place for the plantation of colonies, as a
place for the habitation of men, as a place to which laws
and religion, and manners and science, were to be trans-
ferred, as a place in which the creatures of God should
multiply and fill the earth, under friendly skies and with
religious hearts, he gave it to the whole world, he gave it
to universal man ! From this seminal principle, and from
a handful, a hundred saints, blessed of God and ever
honored of men, landed on the shores of Plymouth and
elsewhere along the coast, united, as I have said already
more than once, in the process of time, with the settle-
ment at Jamestown, has sprung this great people of which
we are a portion.
I do not reckon myself among quite the oldest of the
land, and yet it so happens that very recently I recurred
to an exulting speech or oration of my own, in which I
spoke of my country as consisting of nine millions of
people. I could hardly persuade ^ myself that within the
short time which had elapsed since that epoch our popula-
tion had doubled ; and that at the present moment there
does exist most unqucstional)ly as great a probability of
84 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
its continued progress, in the same ratio, as has ever existed
in any previous time. I do not know whose imagination is
fertile enough, I do not know whose conjectures, I ahnost
may sa}'-, are wild enough to tell what may be the progress
of wealth and population iii the United States in half a
century to come. All we know is, here is a people of
from seventeen to twenty millions, intelligent, educated,
freeholders, freemen, republicans, possessed of all the means
of modern improvement, modern science, arts, literature,
with the world before them ! There is nothing to check
them till they touch the shores of the Pacific, and then,
they are so much accustomed to water, that that's a facility
and no obstruction !
I can see, that on this continent all is to be Anglo-
American from Plymouth Eock to the Pacific seas, from
the north pole to California. That is certain; and in the
Eastern world, I only see that you can hardly place a
finger on the map of the world and be an inch from an
English settlement.
Gentlemen, if there be any thing in the supremacy of
races, the experiment now in progress will develop it. If
there be any truth in the idea, that those who issued from
the great Caucasian fountain, and spread over Europe, are
to react on India and on Asia, and to act on the whole
Western world, it may not be for us, nor our children nor
our grandchildren to see it, but it will be for our descend-
ants of some generation to see the extent of that progress
and dominion of the favored races.
Eor myself, I believe there is no limit fit to be assigned
to it by the human mind, because I find at work every-
where, on both sides of the Atlantic, under various forms
OEATIONS OF DANIEL WEBSTER 85
and degrees of restriction on the one hand, and under
various degrees of motive and stimulus on the other hand,
in these branches of a common race, the great principle
of the freedom of human thought, and the respectability
of individual character. I find everywhere an elevation
of the character of man as man, an elevation of the
individual as a component part of society. I find every-
where a rebuke of the idea, that the many are made for
the few, or that government is any thing but an agency
for mankind. And I care not beneath what zone, frozen,
temperate, or torrid ; I care not of what complexion, white
or brown; I care not under what circumstances of climate
or cultivation, if I can find a race of men on an inhabitable
spot of earth whose general sentiment it is, and whose
general feeling it is, that government is made for man — •
man, as a religious, moral, and social being — and not man
for government, there I know that I shall find prosperity
and happiness.
PILGRIM FESTIVAL AT NEW YORK IN 1S50 .
After the customary toasts on this occasion had been given, the
president of the day, Mr. Grinnell, asked attention to a toast
wliich, as he said, was not on tlie list, but which he thought
every one would vote ouglit to be placed there forthwith.
He gave, "The Constitution and the Union, and their Chief
Defender." This sentiment was received with great applause;
and when Mr. Webster rose to respond to it, he was greeted
with the most prolonged and tumultuous cheers. When the
applause had subsided, he spoke as follows:
Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the j^ew England
Society of New York : — Ye sons of New England ! Ye
S6 THK AMKKIC-\^' SPIRIT
brethern of the kindred tie I I have come hither tonight,
not without some inconvenience, that I might behold a
wngregation w-ho<?e faces bear lineaments of a Xew Eng-
land origin, and whose hearts beat with full New England
pulsations. I willingly make the sacrifice. I am here to
attend this meeting of the Pilgrim Society of Xew York,
the great off-shoot of the Pilgrim Society of Massachusetts.
And, gentlemen, I shall begin what I have to say, which
is but little, by tendering to you my thanks for the invita-
tion extended to me, and by wishing you, one and all.
every kind of happiness and prosperity.
Gentlemen, this has been a stormy, cold, boisterous, and
inclement day. The winds have been harsh, the skies have
been severe: and if we had been exposed to their rigor:
if we had no shelter against this howling and freezing
tempest: if we were wan and worn out; if half of us
were sick and tired, and ready to descend into the^ grave :
if we were on the bleak coast of Plymouth, houseless, home-
less, with nothing over our heads but the heavens, and
that God who sits above the heavens : if we had distressed
wives on our arms, and hungry and shivering children
clinging to our skirts, we should see something, and feel
something of that scene, which, in the providence of God.
was enacted at Plymouth on the 2?nd of Peoember. 16?0.
Thanks to Almighty God. who, from that distressed
early condition of our fathers, has raised us to a height of
prosperity and of happiness which they neither enjoyed.
nor could have anticipated! We have learned much of
them: they could have foreseen little of us. "Would to
God, my friends, that, when we carry our affections and
our recollections back to that period, we could arm our-
ORATIONS OF DANIEL WEBSTER g?
selves with something of the stern virtues which supported
them, in that hour of peril, and exposure, and suffering!
Would to God that we possessed that unconquerable resolu-
tion, stronger than bai-s of brass or iron, which strengthened
tlieir hearts; that patience, "Sovereign o'er transmuted
ills," and, above all, that I'aitli, that religious laiih,
which, with eyes fast fixed ujnm heaven, tramples all
things earthly beneath her triumphant feet!
Gentlemen, the scenes of this world change. What our
ancestors saw and felt, we shall not see nor feel. ^Tiat they
acliieved it is denied to us even to attempt. The severer
duties of life, requiring the exercise of the stern and un-
bending virtues, were theirs. They were called upon for
the exhibition of those austere qualities, which, before they
came to the "Western wilderness, had made them what
they were. Things have changed. In the progress of
society, the fashions and the habits of life, with all its
conditions, have changed. Tlieir rigid sentiments, and
their tenets, apparently harsh and exilusive, we are not
called on, in every respect, to imitate or commend ; or
rather to imitate, for we should commend them always,
when we consider the state of society in which they had
been adopted, and in which they seemed necessary. Our
fathers had that religious sentiment, that trust in Provi-
dence, that determination to do right, and to seek, through
every degree of toil and sutTcring, the honor of God, and
the preservation of their liberties, which we shall do well
to cherish, to imitate, and to equal, to the utmost of our
ability. It may be true, and it is true, that in the progress
of society the milder virtues Imve come to belong more
especially to our day and our condition. The Pilgrims
88 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
had been great sufferers from intolerance; it was not un-
natural that their own faith and practice, as a consequence,
should become somewhat intolerant. This is the common
imfirmity of human nature. Man retaliates on man. It is
to be hoped, however, that the greater spread of the
benignant principles of religion, of the divine charity of
Christianity, has, to some extent, improved the sentiments
which prevailed in the world at that time. ISTo doubt the
"first comers," as they were called, were attached to their
own forms of public worship, and to their own particular
and strongly cherished religious opinions. No doubt they
esteemed those sentiments, and the observai^ces which they
practiced, to be absolutely binding on all, by the authority
of the word of God. It is true, I think, m the general
advancement of human intelligence that we find, what
they do not seem to have found, that a greater toleration
of religious opinion, a more friendly feeling towards all
who profess reverence for God and obedience to His com-
mands, is not inconsistent with the great and fundamental
principles of religion; I might rather say, is itself one of
those fundamental principles. So we see in our day, I
think, without any departure from the essential principles
of our fathers, a more enlarged and comprehensive Chris-
tian philanthropy. It seems to be the American destiny,
the mission which has been intrusted to us here on this
shore of the Atlantic, the great conception and the great
duty to which we are born, to show that all sects, and all
denominations, professing reverence for the authority of
the Author of our being, and belief in His revelations,
may be safely tolerated without prejudice either to our
religion or ;to our liberties.
ORATIONS OF D.iNIEL WEBSTER 89
In both houses of Congress, in all public oflfices, and all
public affairs, we proceed on the idea that a man's religious
belief is a matter above human law; that it is a question
to be settled between him and his Maker, because he is
responsible to none but his Maker for adopting or reject-
ing revealed truth. And here is the great distinction which
is sometimes overlooked, and which I am afraid is now too
often overlooked, in this land, the glorious inheritance of
the sons of the Pilgrims. Men, for their religious senti-
ments, are accountable to God, and to God only. Eeligion
is both a communication'and a tie between man and his
]\[aker; and to his own Master every man standeth or
falleth. But when men come together in society, establish
social relations and form governments for the protection
of the rights of all, then it is indispensable that this
right of private judgment should in some measure be
relinquished and made subservient to the judgment of the
whole. Eeligion may exist while every man is left respon-
sible only to God. Society, civil rule, the civil state, can-
not exist, while every man is responsible to nobody and to
nothing but to his own opinion. And our Now England
ancestors understood all this quite well. Gentlemen, there
is the "Constitution" which was adopted on board the
Mayflower in November, 1620, while that bark of immortal
memory was riding at anchor in the harbor of Cape Cod.
What is it? Its authors honored God; they professed to
obey all His commandments, and to live ever and in all
things in His obedience. But they say, nevertheless, that
for the establishment of a civil polity, and for the greater
security and preservation of their civil rights and liberties,
they agree that the laws and ordinances, acts and constitu-
90 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
tions (and I am glad they put in the word "Constitutions")
— they say that these laws and ordinances, acts and consti-
tutions, which may be established by those whom they shall
appoint to enact them, they, in all due submission and
obedience, will support.
"We are now two hundred and thirty years from that
great event. There is the Mayflower.* There is an imita-
tion on a small scale, but a correct one, of the Mayflower.
Sons of Xew England ! There was in ancient times a
ship that carried Jason to the acquisition of the Golden
Fleece. There was a flag-ship at the battle of Actium
which made Augustus Caesar master of the world. In
modern times, there have been flag-ships which have carried
Hawke, and Howe, and Xelson of the other continent, and
Hull, and Decatur, and Stewart of this, to triumph. What
are they all, in the chance of remembrance among men, to
that little bark, the Mayflower, which reached these shores
on the 22nd day of December, 1620? Yes, brethern of
New England, yes! that Mayflower was a flower destined
to be of perpetual bloom. Its verdure will stand the sultry
blasts of summer, and the chilling winds of autumn. It
will defy winter; it will defy all climate, and all time, and
will continue to spread its petals to the world, and to
exhale an ever-living odor and fragrance, to the last
syllable of recorded time.
Gentlemen, brethern of Xew England! whom I have
come some hundreds of miles to meet this night, let me
present to you one of the most distinguished of those per-
sonages who came hither on the deck of the Ma^-flower.
Let me fancy that I now see Elder "William Brewster enter-
•Pointing to a small figure of a ship, in confectionery, represent-
ing the Mayflower, that stood before him.
ORATIONS OF DAXfEL WEBSTEE jl
ing the door at the farther end of this hall; a tall and
erect figure, of plain dress, of no elegance of manner beyond
a respectful bow, mild and cheerful, but of no merriment
:hat reaches beyond a smile. Let me suppose that this
image stood now before us, or that it was looking in upon
tibk assembly.
"Are ye," he would say, with a voice of exultation, and
yet softened with melancholy, "are ye our children?
Does this scene of refinement, of el^ance, of riches, of
hiiury, does all this come from our labors? Is this
magnificent city, the like of which we nerer saw nor
herrd of on either c-ontinent. is this but an offshoot from
Plymouth Bock?
"Qois jam locns .
Quae regio in terris noetri son plena laboris?
'*Is tibis one part of the great reward for which my
brethem and myself endured lives of toil and of hardship ?
We had faith and hope. God granted us the spirit to
look forward, and we did look forward. But this scene
we never anticipated. Our hopes were on another life.
Of earthly gratifications we tasted little ; for human honors
we had little expectation. Our bones lie <hi the hiU in
Ph-mouth churchyard, obscure, unmarked, secreted, to pre-
serve our graves from the knowledge of savage foes. Xo
stone tells where we lie. And yet, let me say to you who
are our descendants, who possess this glorious country and
aU it contains, who enjoy this hour of prosperity and the
thousand blessings showered upon it by the God of your
fathers, we envy you not, we reproach you not. Be rich,
be prosperous, be enlightened. Live in plea-sure, if such
be your allotment on earth; but live, also, always to God
92 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
and to duty. Spread yourselves and your children over
the continent, accomplish the whole of your great destiny,
and if it be that through the whole you carry Puritan
hearts with you, if you still cherish an undying love of
civil and religious liberty, and mean to enjoy them your-
selves, and are willing to shed your heart's blood to trans-
mit them to your posterity, then will you be worthy
descendants of Carver and Allerton and Bradford, and the
rest of those who landed from stormy seas on the rock of
Plymouth."
Gentlemen, that little vessel, on the 23d day of Decem-
ber, 1620, made her safe landing on the shore of Plymouth.
She had been tossed on a tempestuous ©cean; she ap-
proached the New England coast under circumstances of
great distress and trouble; yet, amidst all the disasters
of her voyage, she accomplished her end, and she bore a
hundred precious pilgrims to the shore of the I^ew World.
Gentlemen, let her be considered this night as an emblem
of New England, the New England which now is. New
England is a ship, staunch, strong, well built, and partic-
ularly well manned. She may be occasionally thrown into
the trough of the sea by violence of winds and waves, and
may wallow there for a time ; but, depend upon it, she will
right herself. She will ere long come round to the wind,
and obey her helm.
We have hardly begun, my brethren, to realize the vast
importance to human society, and to the history and happi-
ness of the world, of the voyage of that little vessel which
brought hither the lave of civil and religious liberty, and
the reverence of the Bible, for the instruction of the future
generations of men. We have hardly begun to realize the
ORATIONS OF DANIEL WEBSTER 93
consequences of that voyage. Heretofore the extension
of our race, following our New England ancestry, has crept
along the shore. But now it has extended itself. It has
crossed the continent. It has not only transcended the
Alleghanies, but has capped the Eocky Mountains. It is
now upon the shores of the Pacific; and on this day, or,
if not on this day, then this day twelve month, descendants
of New England will there celebrate the landing. . . .
(A Voice. "Today; they celebrate it today.")
God bless them ! Here's to the health and success of the
California Society of Pilgrims assembled on the shores of
the Pacific. And it shall yet go hard if the three hundred
millions of people of China, provided they are intelligent
enough to understand anything, shall not one day hear and
know something about the rock of Plymouth too.
THE ADDITION TO THE CAPITOL
An address delivered at the laying of the corner-stone of the addi-
tion to the Capitol on the 4th day of July, 1851.
This inheritance which we enjoy today is not only an
inheritance of liberty, but of our own peculiar American
liberty. . . . That liberty is characteristic, peculiar, and
altogether our own. Nothing like it existed in former
times, nor was known in the most enlightened states of
antiquity; while with us its principles have become inter-
woven into the minds of individual men, connected with
our daily opinions, and our daily habits, until it is, if I
may say so, an element of social as well as of political life ;
and the consequence is, that to whatever region an Amer-
ican citizen carries himself, he takes with him, fully devel-
?4 THE AMKKICAX SriRIT
oped in his own understanding and e:xperienc^, our Amer-
ican principles and opinions, and beeomets readv at once,
in co-operation "with others, to apply them to the fonnation
of new govemments. Of this a most wonderful instance
may be seen in the history of the State of California.
On a former occasion I ventured to remaric. that *^t is
very difficult to estalJlish a free cons^^rrative government for
the equal adv^ancanent of all the interests of society. What
has Germany done, learned Gneimany. more full of ancient
lore than all the world beside? What has Italy done?
What have they done who dwell on the spot where Cicero
lived? They have not the power of sell-govejnmeait whio^^
a common town-meeting, with us, possesses. ....
"Yes, I say that those persons who have gone from our
town-meeiings to dig gold in California are more nt to make
a republican government than any body of men in Ger-
many or Italy: because they have learned this one gneat
lesson, that thei>e is no security without law, and that,
under the circumstances in which they are plaoed, where
thei^ is no military authority to cut their throats, ihwe is
no sovervjign will but the will of the majority; that, thenf-
fope, if they i^emain, they must submit to tiiat wtU." And
this I believe to be strictly true, ,
I will venture to state, in a few wtads, what I take these
American principles in substance to be, Tkey omsist, as
1 think, in the first place, in the estahliskm»it of pc^wlar
governments, on the basis of wprcsjentation : fw it is x^ain
that a pure democracy, like that which existed in s>c*rae of
the states of Qwece, in which exwy individual had a direct
vote in the ^ladxiient of all laws, cannot possiUy esist in
a country of wide «t»it This repitesentatioB is to be BMde
ORATIOXS OF DANIEL WEBSTER I>5
as equal as circumstancos will allow. Xow, tliis principle
of popular representation, prevailing either in all the
bnuuJies of governnionu or in some of them, has existeil in
these States almost from the days of the settlements at
Jamestown ainl riymouth: borrowed, no doubt, from the
example of the jx>pular branch of the British legislatun?.
The representation of the people in the British House of
Commons was. however, originally very une<|ual. and is
yet iK>t etjUiil. Indeevl, it may be doubted whether the
ap|varance of knights and burgesses, assembling on the
summons of the crown, was not intendcvi at first as an
assistance imd support to the royal prerogative, in matters
of ivvenue and taxation, rjither than as a mode of ascer-
taining popular opinion. Xevertheless, representation had
a popular origin, and savored more and more of the char-
acter of that origin, as it acvjuired, by slow degrees, greater
and greater strength, in the actu:^l government of the
country. The constitution of the House of Commons was
certainly a form of representation, however unequal ; num-
Ivrs were counted, and majorities prevailed ; and wlien our
ancestors, acting upon this example, introduced more
ei]uality of representation, the idea assumed a mor«
rational and distinct shape. At any nite, tliis manner of
exercising popular power was familiar to our fathers when
they settled on this continent. They adopted it, and gen-
eration has risen up after generation, all acknowledging
it, and all learning its practice and its forms.
The next fundamental principle in our system is. that
"e will of the majority, fairly expressed through means of
opresentation. shall have the fonv of law; and it is quite
vident that, in a coimtrv without thrones or aristocracies
96 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
or privileged castes or classes, there can be no other founda-
tion for law, to stand upon.
And, as the necessary result of this, the third element is,
that the law is the supreme rule for the government of all.
The great sentiment of Alzaeus, so beautifully presented
to us by Sir William Jones, is absolutely indispensable to
the construction and maintenance of our political systems :
What constitutes a state?
Xot high-raised battlement or labored mound,
Thick wall or moated gate;
Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crowned ;
Not bays and broad-armed ports,
Where, laughing at the storm, rich naviej ride;
Not starred and spangled courts,
Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride.
No: Men, high-minded Men,
With powers as far above dull brutes endued,
In forest, brake, or den,
As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude:
Men who their duties know,
But know their rights and, knowing, dare maintain;
Prevent the long aimed blow,
And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain :
These constitute a state;
And Sovereign Law, that State's collected will,
O'er thrones and globes elate
Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill.
And finally, another most important part of the great
fabric of American liberty is, that there shall be written
constitutions, founded on the immediate authority of the
people themselves, and regulating and restraining all the
pojvers conferred upon government, whether legislative,
executive, or judicial. _ ^^
3477^61
Lot-.19
ORATIONS OF DANIEL WEBSTER 97
This, fellow-citizens, I suppose to be a just summary of
our American principles, and I have on this occasion
sought to express them in the plainest and the fewest
words. The summary may not be entirely exact, but I
hope it may be sufficiently so to make manifest to the rising
generation among ourselves, and to those elsewhere who
may choose to inquire into the nature of our political insti-
tutions,, the general theory upon which they are founded.
And I now proceed to add, that the strong and deep-
settled conviction of all intelligent persons amongst us is,
that, in order to support a useful and wise government
upon these popular principles, the general education of the
people, and the wide diffusion of pure morality and true
religion, are indispensable. Individual virtue is a part of
public virtue. It is difficult to conceive how there can
remain morality in government when it shall cease to exist
among the people; or how the aggregate of the political
institutions, all the organs of which consist only of men,
should be wise, and beneficent, and competent to inspire
confidence, if the opposite qualities belong to the individ-
uals who constitute those organs, and make up that
aggregate.
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